This song has been in my head for a long time.
Raining In Baltimore
This circus is falling down on its knees
The big top is crumbling down
It's raining in Baltimore, fifty miles east
Where you should be, no one,s around
I need a phone call
I need a raincoat
I need a big love
I need a phone call
These train conversations are passing me by
And I don't have nothing to say
You get what you pay for
But I just had no intention of living this way
I need a phone call
I need a plane ride
I need a sunburn
I need a raincoat
And I get no answers
And I don't get no change
It's raining in Baltimore, baby
But everything else is the same
There's things I remember, and things I forget
I miss you, I guess that I should
Three thousand five hundred miles away
But what would you change if you could?
I need a phone call
Maybe I should buy a new car
I can always hear a freight train if I listen real hard
And I wish it was a small world
Because I'm lonely for the big towns
I'd like to hear a little guitar
I think its time to put the top down
I need a phone call
I need a raincoat
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Add To The Beauty
Yes, I stole the title. But I like it.
Two nights ago I rode in a van full of friends, speakers blaring Modest Mouse, up to the top of a hill and stopped. We all piled out into the summer night that felt like it should be cold but was only pleasantly chilly, and we stood and sat and lay in the road and looked at the sky spread out above and around us. There was a meteor shower that night, which was lovely, but even more lovely than that was the quiet stillness and darkness of the night, the brightness of the stars, the closeness of friends, and the warm smell of cigar smoke in the air.
We looked at the pictures drawn across the sky by the clouds, and pointed out old friends like Cassiopea and the Big Dipper. We laughed and tickled each other, and we also sat still. We craned our necks backwards until we could see the curve of the sky around the earth.
There are few moments as beautiful as that one.
Two nights ago I rode in a van full of friends, speakers blaring Modest Mouse, up to the top of a hill and stopped. We all piled out into the summer night that felt like it should be cold but was only pleasantly chilly, and we stood and sat and lay in the road and looked at the sky spread out above and around us. There was a meteor shower that night, which was lovely, but even more lovely than that was the quiet stillness and darkness of the night, the brightness of the stars, the closeness of friends, and the warm smell of cigar smoke in the air.
We looked at the pictures drawn across the sky by the clouds, and pointed out old friends like Cassiopea and the Big Dipper. We laughed and tickled each other, and we also sat still. We craned our necks backwards until we could see the curve of the sky around the earth.
There are few moments as beautiful as that one.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Nothing and Everything
I feel like I should write something, since I haven't posted in such a long time. The trouble is, I don't know what to say. Writing is the same for me as reading or art or biking or playing the piano, or almost anything else that I love to do, in that the more I do it the more I have to do it, but if I take a break for a while it's really hard to get back into.
I saw pictures of my babies in India a few nights ago. They're all really big now, and the ones that were the littlest while I was there are losing all their front teeth, and have made the transition from "little kid" to just "kid". It was strange to see. I know it's been almost two years since I've seen them, but I forgot that kids grow a lot in two years.
I also watched a video of Prem, one of the older boys at the orphanage and also one of the sweetest kids you will ever meet, singing a hymn. His distinctly Indian voice and his thick accent chnaged the sound of the familiar hymn a little bit, but almost from the first word I knew the song, and while I listened to Prem sing the beauty of it all overwhelmed me. A sixteen-year-old boy on the other side of the world, a person whose life is completely different from mine in every possible way, was singing one of my favorite hymns, proclaiming the goodness and faithfulness of the same God that I try to follow. To me there's nothing that can compare to listening and watching as people from completely different backgrounds and ways of life sing a song that is familiar and dear to my American, Evangelical self.
But even more beautiful was the assurance that the boy singing has not forgotten the God who loves him. "[God's] word does not return void", and in Prem it has found good soil in which it is growing strong. Even though I can't be there to see it, at least I know it. That might be enough.
I saw pictures of my babies in India a few nights ago. They're all really big now, and the ones that were the littlest while I was there are losing all their front teeth, and have made the transition from "little kid" to just "kid". It was strange to see. I know it's been almost two years since I've seen them, but I forgot that kids grow a lot in two years.
I also watched a video of Prem, one of the older boys at the orphanage and also one of the sweetest kids you will ever meet, singing a hymn. His distinctly Indian voice and his thick accent chnaged the sound of the familiar hymn a little bit, but almost from the first word I knew the song, and while I listened to Prem sing the beauty of it all overwhelmed me. A sixteen-year-old boy on the other side of the world, a person whose life is completely different from mine in every possible way, was singing one of my favorite hymns, proclaiming the goodness and faithfulness of the same God that I try to follow. To me there's nothing that can compare to listening and watching as people from completely different backgrounds and ways of life sing a song that is familiar and dear to my American, Evangelical self.
But even more beautiful was the assurance that the boy singing has not forgotten the God who loves him. "[God's] word does not return void", and in Prem it has found good soil in which it is growing strong. Even though I can't be there to see it, at least I know it. That might be enough.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Amy Hit The Atmosphere
One of my favorite Counting Crows song has a line that says,
"There has to be a change, I'm sure. Today was just a day fading into another, and that can't be what a life is for."
Lately all of my todays have been fading into yesterdays, into a long, blurred line of days and weeks, and I don't like it. The past week has seemed incredibly long, and yet when I try to think back about each individual day I find that I can't separate one from all the others.
I watched a movie not long ago about Dorothy Day, and after I cried my way through it I was left with a gnawing, insatiable hunger to do something, almost anything, besides what I'm doing now. Because when I look at what I'm doing, I don't really like what I see. I'm living at home with my family, enrolled in community college, working a couple of jobs just to fill up the tank of my car, hanging out with old friends and going to my old church, just as if the last two years had never happened.
I live in the past so often. I think back to India and the kids I love there, Kuala Lumpur and the friends I made, Thailand, Phimpa, and the staff at The Well, and I wish I were any of those places instead of an old, colonial house in a little New Hampshire town. I watch other people leave for amazing trips all around the world, and I stay home and don't do anything. It seems that everyone I know is moving into an active community, traveling the world, going on excellent adventures, feeding the poor, and loving the unlovable, and I am not.
And that just "can't be what a life is for". At least not my life.
But what if it is? What if what God wants from me is what seems the hardest right now, to live contentedly at home without much direction and just do what he's put in front of me here? Even that sounds good, but in practice it's much harder. It's hard to live in the present moment when I don't feel like Dorothy Day or Mother Teresa. It's hard to remember to appreciate the beauty that God has added to my life, and love the people around me day in and day out. It's hard to admit that two years out of high school I still don't know what I'm doing in life. It's hard to watch my friends get engaged left and right without a guy in sight for me. It's hard to get up in the morning and start another day in a house full of unpacked boxes and disassembled furniture. It's hard to go to work when I'm just counting the hours until I leave again.
It's hard to watch everyone else doing large and beautiful things with their lives when I'm still trying to figure out the next step.
And I wondered the other day as I complained to Jesus about all of this if my life would have turned out differently if I had expected something different. I have never known where I was going in life, never had a boyfriend, never wanted a 9 to 5 job and the American dream. I admired the women I knew that were single and living completely on faith. I expected to go to college without a major,and I'm still doing that. I expected to transfer from one school to another, and sure enough I've done that, and I'll do it again next year. I expect to see at least two of my siblings married before I am, and my younger brother has a serious girlfriend while I am still single. Did I bring this on myself? It seems like I live just looking for the moment when I screw things up irreversibly.
"There has to be a change, I'm sure. Today was just a day fading into another, and that can't be what a life is for."
"If we do not have peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other." Mother Teresa said that, and I absolutely love it. If I do not have peace, perhaps it's because I have forgotten that my life is not just mine to do with what seems best right now. My life belongs to the people around me just as much as it does to me. It is in loving other people, belonging to them, and letting them stake a claim to me that I will find Jesus, and that is really what I want in life. Underneath all the longing for change and adventure is a deep desire to see him made real in my life. I suppose that if he wants to do that here instead of somewhere else, the only thing to do is trust that he knows best.
"There has to be a change, I'm sure. Today was just a day fading into another, and that can't be what a life is for."
Lately all of my todays have been fading into yesterdays, into a long, blurred line of days and weeks, and I don't like it. The past week has seemed incredibly long, and yet when I try to think back about each individual day I find that I can't separate one from all the others.
I watched a movie not long ago about Dorothy Day, and after I cried my way through it I was left with a gnawing, insatiable hunger to do something, almost anything, besides what I'm doing now. Because when I look at what I'm doing, I don't really like what I see. I'm living at home with my family, enrolled in community college, working a couple of jobs just to fill up the tank of my car, hanging out with old friends and going to my old church, just as if the last two years had never happened.
I live in the past so often. I think back to India and the kids I love there, Kuala Lumpur and the friends I made, Thailand, Phimpa, and the staff at The Well, and I wish I were any of those places instead of an old, colonial house in a little New Hampshire town. I watch other people leave for amazing trips all around the world, and I stay home and don't do anything. It seems that everyone I know is moving into an active community, traveling the world, going on excellent adventures, feeding the poor, and loving the unlovable, and I am not.
And that just "can't be what a life is for". At least not my life.
But what if it is? What if what God wants from me is what seems the hardest right now, to live contentedly at home without much direction and just do what he's put in front of me here? Even that sounds good, but in practice it's much harder. It's hard to live in the present moment when I don't feel like Dorothy Day or Mother Teresa. It's hard to remember to appreciate the beauty that God has added to my life, and love the people around me day in and day out. It's hard to admit that two years out of high school I still don't know what I'm doing in life. It's hard to watch my friends get engaged left and right without a guy in sight for me. It's hard to get up in the morning and start another day in a house full of unpacked boxes and disassembled furniture. It's hard to go to work when I'm just counting the hours until I leave again.
It's hard to watch everyone else doing large and beautiful things with their lives when I'm still trying to figure out the next step.
And I wondered the other day as I complained to Jesus about all of this if my life would have turned out differently if I had expected something different. I have never known where I was going in life, never had a boyfriend, never wanted a 9 to 5 job and the American dream. I admired the women I knew that were single and living completely on faith. I expected to go to college without a major,and I'm still doing that. I expected to transfer from one school to another, and sure enough I've done that, and I'll do it again next year. I expect to see at least two of my siblings married before I am, and my younger brother has a serious girlfriend while I am still single. Did I bring this on myself? It seems like I live just looking for the moment when I screw things up irreversibly.
"There has to be a change, I'm sure. Today was just a day fading into another, and that can't be what a life is for."
"If we do not have peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other." Mother Teresa said that, and I absolutely love it. If I do not have peace, perhaps it's because I have forgotten that my life is not just mine to do with what seems best right now. My life belongs to the people around me just as much as it does to me. It is in loving other people, belonging to them, and letting them stake a claim to me that I will find Jesus, and that is really what I want in life. Underneath all the longing for change and adventure is a deep desire to see him made real in my life. I suppose that if he wants to do that here instead of somewhere else, the only thing to do is trust that he knows best.
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