live in love

prom weekend, Jenny's b-day month -- this seemed appropriate -- don't forget to make life a dance

I Hope You Dance-Lee Ann Womak

I hope you never lose your sense of wonder
You get your fill to eat but always keep that hunger
May you never take one single breath for granted
God forbid love ever leave you empty-handed

I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens
Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance

I hope you dance
I hope you dance

I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance
Never settle for the path of least resistance
Living might mean taking chances but they're worth taking
Lovin' might be a mistake but it's worth making

Don't let some hell-bent heart leave you bitter
When you come close to selling out reconsider
Give the heavens above more than just a passing glance
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance

I hope you dance
(Time is a wheel in constant motion always)
I hope you dance
(Rolling us along)
I hope you dance
(Tell me who wants to look back on their years and wonder)
I hope you dance
(Where those years have gone)

I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens
Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance

Dance
I hope you dance
(Dance)
I hope you dance
(Time is a wheel in constant motion always)
I hope you dance
(Rolling us along)
I hope you dance
(Tell me who wants to look back on their years and wonder)
I hope you dance
(Where those years have gone)

Tell me who wants to look back on their years and wonder
(Dance)
Where those years have gone
(Dance)

it's been much too long - gotta start up again with a bang!

“I've learned that terror doesn't happen because some group of people somewhere like Pakistan or Afghanistan simply decide to hate us. It happens because children aren't being offered a bright enough future that they have a reason to choose life over death."

"Haji Ali spoke. ‘If you want to thrive in Baltistan, you must respect our ways. The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honored guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family, and for our family, we are prepared to do anything, even die. Doctor Greg, you must take time to share three cups of tea. We may be uneducated but we are not stupid. We have lived and survived here for a long time.’ That day, Haji Ali taught me the most important lesson I’ve ever learned in my life.

We Americans think you have to accomplish everything quickly…Haji Ali taught me to share three cups of tea, to slow down and make building relationships as important as building projects.

He taught me that I had more to learn from the people I work with than I could ever hope to teach them."

"Once you educate the boys, they tend to leave the villages and go search for work in the cities, but the girls stay home, become leaders in the community, and pass on what they’ve learned. If you really want to change a culture, to empower women, improve basic hygiene and health care, and fight high rates of infant mortality, the answer is to educate girls."

"What we are trying to do may be just a drop in the ocean, but the ocean would be less because of that missing drop."

Greg Mortenson

Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace... One School at a Time

I wish I was at St. Ben's...

I'm At St. Ben's YouTube Video

(well, I guess not right now since they're on Easter Break, but in general I miss college!)

Holy Week kick-off

Are we living for PROXIMITY to Jesus or INTIMACY with Jesus??


http://urminneapolis.org/mediaSermons.php
 Look for Judas: Small Decisions
**sermon not up yet but the others are great, should be soon**

don't worry about tomorrow

Finish every day and be done with it.

You have done what you could;

some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in;

forget them as soon as you can.

TOMORROW IS A NEW DAY;

you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

²⁵ “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?
²⁷ Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
   
³³ But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴ Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Matthew 6:25-27, 33-34

Grief may be a thing we all have in common, but it looks different on everyone.

It isn't just death we have to grieve. It's life. It's loss. It's change.

And when we wonder why it has to suck so much sometimes, has to hurt so bad. The thing we gotta try to remember is that it can turn on a dime.

That's how you stay alive. When it hurts so much you can't breathe, that's how you survive.

By remembering that one day, somehow, impossibly, you won't feel this way. It won't hurt this much.

Grief comes in its own time for everyone, in its own way.

So the best we can do, the best anyone can do, is try for honesty.

The really crappy thing, the very worst part of grief is that you can't control it.

The best we can do is try to let ourselves feel it when it comes.

And let it go when we can.

The very worst part is that the minute you think you're past it, it starts all over again.

And always, every time, it takes your breath away.

-Grey's Anatomy

cherishing spring

I found this online, it's beautiful...makes me want to go out and take a walk through the woods.
I wish my pictures would turn out this amazing!

Source:
http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-path=10419&pq-locale=en_US&_requestid=13269

"When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die." -Jean-Paul Sartre

Linkin Park sings this in "Hands Held High"
Other lyrics from the song that are powerful:

Jump when they tell us they want to see jumping.
Fuck that, I want to see some fist pumping.
Risk something.
Take back what's yours.
Say something that you know they might attack you for

Cause I'm sick of being treated like I have before.
Like I'm stupid standing for what I'm standing for.
Like this war's really just a different brand of war.
Like it doesn't cater to rich and abandon poor.

 

Twins Opening Day!

People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball.  I'll tell you what I do.  I stare out the window and wait for spring.  ~Rogers Hornsby

I see great things in baseball.  It's our game - the American game.  It will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism.  Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set.  Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us.  ~Walt Whitman

I've come to the conclusion that the two most important things in life are good friends and a good bullpen.  ~Bob Lemon, 1981

 

One of the beautiful things about baseball is that every once in a while you come into a situation where you want to, and where you have to, reach down and prove something.” -Nolan Ryan

You... were created to be loved. So for you to live as if you were unloved is a limitation, not the other way around...

Living unloved is like clipping a bird's wing and removing its ability to fly...

A bird is not defined by being grounded but by his ability to fly.

Remember this, humans are defined not by their limitations, but by the intentions I have for them; not by what they seem to be, but by everything it means to be created in my image.

Love is NOT the limitation; love is the flying.

I AM love.

— William P. Young (The Shack)

Life is not a spectator sport; win, lose or draw, the game is in progress whether we want it to be or not. So go ahead, argue with the refs, change the rules, cheat a little, take a break and tend to your wounds. But play hard, play fast, play loose and free; play as if there's no tomorrow... It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game, right?

-Meredith from Grey's Anatomy Season 1

exerpt from "Through Painted Deserts: Light, God, and Beauty on the Open Road" by Donald Miller

And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful born inside of you about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God. We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn't it?

It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out.

Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass, it's about learning to dance in the rain.

define GRACE

A man in my Bible study last night asked for the definition of grace.
The priest's answer was good, of course, but this speaks to me more...

Grace is what God gives us when we don't deserve and Mercy is when God doesn't give us what we do deserve

Irish Blessings and Sayings for St. Patrick's Day

There are two types of people in the world, those who are Irish and those who wish they were.

May your blessings outnumber
The shamrocks that grow,
And may trouble avoid you
Wherever you go.

 May the best day of your past
Be the worst day of your future.





 

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
and rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

Every day gives you an opportunity to improve.
With every run, you can try to be better.
Not just a better runner, but a better person.

John "The Penguin" Bingham, The Courage to Start

retweet from TWLOHA

"If one dream should fall and break into a thousand pieces, never be afraid to pick one of those pieces up and begin again."

– Flavia Weedn

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is even beyond our vision.We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying
that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church's mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
It may be incomplete,
but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.We may never see the end results, but that is the difference
between the master builder and the worker.We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.We are prophets of a future not our own.This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted,
knowing that they hold future promise.We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.
 We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation
in realizing that. This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well.

Amen.

"I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.

Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them.

And the point is to live everything.

Live the questions now.

Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."
— Rainer Maria Rilke

Do Not Worry - Matthew 6:25-34

²⁵ “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? ²⁷ Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life^[e]?
   ²⁸ “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. ²⁹ Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. ³⁰ If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? ³¹ So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³² For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. ³³ But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
³⁴ Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

"One Day You Will" Lady Antebellum

You feel like you're falling backwards

Like you're slippin' through the cracks

Like no one would even notice

If you left this town and never came back

You walk outside and all you see is rain

You look inside and all you feel is pain

And you can't see it now

But down the road the sun is shining

In every cloud there's a silver lining

Just keep holding on (just keep holding on)

And every heartache makes you stronger

But it won't be much longer

You'll find love, you'll find peace

And the you you're meant to be

I know right now that's not the way you feel

But one day you will

You wake up every morning and ask yourself

What am I doing here anyway

With the weight of all those disappointments

Whispering in your ear

You're just barely hanging by a thread

You wanna scream but you're down to your last breath

And you don't know it yet

You will

Find the strength to rise above

You will

Find just what you're made of, you're made of

One day you will

Oh one day you will

Don't you just love how songs can just put your life into words perfectly??

I guess I am going through a country song lyrics phase, who would have thought??

"Change" Taylor Swift

And it’s a sad picture, the final blow hits you
Somebody else gets what you wanted again and
You know it’s all the same, another time and place
Repeating history and you’re getting sick of it
But I believe in whatever you do
And I’ll do anything to see it through

Because these things will change
Can you feel it now?
These walls that they put up to hold us back will fall down
This revolution, the time will come
For us to finally win
And we’ll sing hallelujah, we’ll sing hallelujah

So we’ve been outnumbered
Raided and now cornered
It’s hard to fight when the fight ain’t fair
We’re getting stronger now
Find things they never found
They might be bigger
But we’re faster and never scared
You can walk away, say we don’t need this
But there’s something in your eyes
Says we can beat this

Because these things will change
Can you feel it now?
These walls that they put up to hold us back will fall down
This revolution, the time will come
For us to finally win
And we’ll sing hallelujah, well sing hallelujah

Tonight we stand, get off our knees
Fight for what we’ve worked for all these years
And the battle was long, it’s the fight of our lives
But we’ll stand up champions tonight

It was the night things changed
Can you see it now?
These walls that they put up to hold us back fell down
It’s a revolution, throw your hands up
Cause we never gave in
And we sang hallelujah, we sang hallelujahHallelujah

Do you wish to rise?
Begin by descending.
You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds?
Lay first the foundation of humility.
It was pride that changed angels into devils,
it is humility that makes men as angels

.St. Augustine

FAITH is taking the first step,

even when you can't see the whole staircase.

-Martin Luther King Jr.

The Journey

start of something new

"In a contagious world, we learn to keep our distance. If we get too close to those that are suffering, we may get infected with their pain. But only when we get close enough to catch their hurt, will they be close enough to catch our love."

-John Ortberg

This is my blog...
 now that I am out of high school, out of college, out of AmeriCorps and into what they call the "real world".

I hope to update it daily with an inspirational quote, verse, picture, video -- something to make my day and yours a little brighter and a little more meaningful.

Thanks for reading,

Meg