"It's better to have the faith to embrace reality with all its pain than to cling to the false comfort of a painless fantasy. That life and growth and meaning can come only in the risk of obedience. The future-even if it's h ard-is better than nostalgia" - John Ortberg

Bethany: "Look at his irresistible eyes! There....irresistible!!!"

Torry Conversation

What is beauty??
Brace yourself! Take cover! Run! Hide! :P
Everyone to the basements the bombs are about to be launched!
And I shall embrace the embers...

haha :D
I seem to have sent everyone to their bases.
Should I try to launch the great bomb, or is it too risky?

My dear launch it, it is scary but a "beautiful" bomb as well. :)

this was all online so that is why everyone has a different color. This is what happens when one brave soul tries to start a conversation about what true beauty is.

While I was in Santa Barbara for my sister's graduation, we helped my sister move some stuff out of her house. Most of the stuff was really heavy.

Auntie- "Should we help them?"

Katherine- "No!!! Don't interrupt!!! It's father-daughter bonding! Don't spoil it!!"

Speaking of politics...

In politics, absurdity is not a handicap.
- Napoleon Bonaparte

Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
- Flannery O'Connor

Prayer

“It must be asserted that petitionary prayer only flourishes where there is a twofold belief: that God's name is hallowed too irregularly, his kingdom has come too little, and his will is done too infrequently; second, that God himself can change this situation.” David F. Wells

Myspace or Email?!?!

Aaron- "wait do you have a myspace?"

Me- "no"

Aaron- "what??? why not???"

Me- "I have a life, and myspace takes up to much time that I don't have."

Aaron- "but myspace is so much better than email."

Me- "no it's not, email is the best."

Aaron- "Myspace is like paper, email is like rock. Paper always wins!"

Me- "Rock can beat paper any day! Just think about it: try throwing a rock at paper the paper will break!!"

Aaron- "no it won't!!! ask your mom!!"

Me- "She's gone."

Aaron- "Ask your dog, then!!"

Me- "He's asleep"

Aaron- "then ask your self what would Jesus do?"

Me- "He would choose rock because it is His creation, and paper is man made and kills trees."

Aaron- "Exactly!!! no, wait...Ok...let me tell you what you are going to do: go onto Myspace and click sign up."

Me- "Aaron I have a life and don't want to lose it."

Aaron- "Have you seen the Office?"

Me- "It's like the best show ever!!!"

Aaron- "I have clips of the Office on my myspace. So, myspace is the best!!!"

Me- "No, the Office beats all, including myspace."

Aaron- "Ok, you're right, but myspace has got to be good if it has the Office."

Faith In Uncertainty

"I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: 'Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.' And he replied, 'Go out into the darkness and put your hand in the hand of God. That shall be to you better than a light and safer than a known way'." ~M. Louise Haskins

Williams does it again!!!

This quote is actually from Vanauken, but it is about Williams:

"In Charles Williams Descent into Hell he sets forth his Doctrine of Substituted Love: carrying one another's burdens is not just a figure of speech or something meaningful only in terms of physical burdens like a trunk. Davy's burden was not death but the fear of death. I asked her to give me that burden, a real handing over, like surrendering a trunk to a porter. An act of handing over. And I took it-also act. I then entered into the fear, her fear, with all my heart and mind and imagination, felt it, carried it along with my own fear, which was also real but other. And her burden grew lighter." (A Severe Mercy, 165)

Learning Contentment

These quotes have helped sustained me through my two and half years at a mundane job:

"Resignation is a bregudging existence, one based in not believing the best of God. [It] operates out of a mind-set that God has finite resources - a God of scarcity and not abundance - as though if one person gets blessed, that diminishes our chances of being similarly blessed." - Carolyn McCulley

"[Some] people, however, are always seeking God's will for their lives. They jump from one thing to another, run here and there, and consult all their friends. They have yet to realize that God's will for them is to faithfully carry out their present responsibilities, faithfully doing the job He has already given them...if He does have an alternative plan for their lives, He will show them, in a quiet, normal way, one day when they are least expecting it and when their present responsibilties are completed. God's will is often simply that we do the next thing, as it comes, as best we can and for His glory." -Gigi Tchivijan

Goodness

"A great many things in God's divine providences do not look to the eye like goodness. But faith sits down before mysteries such as these, and says, The Lord is good, therefore all that He does must be good no matter how it looks. I can wait for the explanation." - Hannah Whitall Smith

Contentment

"Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; but remember that what you now have was once among the things only hoped for" -Euripides

Another random spanish thing

Me-#1
Allison-#2

#1- ¡Ay caramba! ¡Aquí hay galletas!
Oh my goodness! Here are cookies!

#2 -No me digas. ¿Dónde hay galletas?
No way. Where are the cookies?

#1- ¡Aquí! ¡En el suelo de la iglesia!
Here! on the floor in the church!

#2- ¿De veras? Aquí hay perritos también.
Really? I find puppies in there.

#1- ¡ Ay caramba! ¡ Tú eres tan afornuada!
Oh my goodness! You are so lucky!

#2- ¿ Deseas tú cambiar?
Do you want to trade?

#1- ¿ Deseas tú cambiar sus perritos por mis galletas?
You want to trade your puppies for my cookies?

#2- ¡Sí, las galletas son asombrosas!
Yes, the cookies are awesome!

#1- Deseas cambiar sus perritos por mis galletas…que encantre…en el suelo…
You want to trade your puppies for my cookies…that I found….on the floor…

#2- Sí ¿ Quieres cambiar o no?
Yes. Do you want to trade or not?

#1- ¡Sí!
Yes!

While doing ministry on the streets of Hollywood....

Krista: "It looks like there's lots of prostitutes out tonight.."
Greg: "That's exciting!"

Bonding

Katherine: on one hand it's 10:00 on the other I'm tired, on the other hand games are really fun.

Mike: well we've been going to sleep late and sleeping in late.

Katherine: I have been up at 8:00 every morning and just lay there and then I was like "do I hear someone going to the bathroom, o nope that wasn't us."

I couldn't agree more...

The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.
- Alfred Hitchcock

Family gatherings

Cousin 1: Hey! let's got TPing!!!
Cousin 2: Yea!!! But who are we going to TP, I mean it is Christmas day!
Cousin 1: Let's just walk down the street and find some one!

We left to go TPing at around 18:00 on Christmas day.

Me: Wow! That was random!
Cousin: Why is everything random?
Me: I don't know it just is! But you have to admit, going TPing on X-mas day is a little random.
Cousin: But everything is always random, why not orange?
Me: oh yea right: That was orange!
Cousin: You're orange!

I was sending a text message to a friend of mine and to do it used the typing thing that no one really knows what it is called. It's that thing that makes words for you...well anyways, my phone made a bit of an error and wrote:

"teacher asphyxiation day"

I personally think that that should be a real holiday!

Life is Full of Surprises

The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait.

-- G.K. Chesterton