- I’ve been listening to Piper’s series on spectacular sins that he preached back in 2007 and they’ve kind of been blowing me away. The idea that God’s sovereignty means that absolutely everything… even evil falls under His control. Yesterday, the sermon was called Fatal Disobedience of Adam and the Triumphant Obedience of Christ. God was not surprised when Adam sinned… in fact Adam was a type (foreshadowing) of Christ. Just as sin was brought into the world by one man, so salvation came through one man – Christ!
- Jeremy Larson is, to be honest, lucky to have a fiance like Elsie. She’s got an amazing thing going on at Red Velvet Art and A Beautiful Mess … really inspiring what she can do with crafts and art and good ideas. Larson, himself, is a strange secret as a musician. Strange because he shouldn’t be, but the fact that he still is somewhat of a secret makes it all the more exciting to discover his complex melodies.
- Little Birdie Plush tutorial – Now this is a great project that I fully intend to start soon! I would love to make a whole legion of these little birdies for Christmas gifts!
- Our newly formed and not yet officially begun Book and Philosophy Club is setting off to a curious start with the book, “God’s Middle Finger,” written by a British journalist traveling through the Sierra Madre in Mexico. Interesting… can’t wait to see what’s up.
- Brooke Fraser pleasantly surprises us with her new album, Flags. It came out the day before my birthday and I splurged. I’m certainly glad I did – especially for the songs, “Flags” and “Crows & Locusts.”
- You want to be relevant?? you want to contextualize the Gospel? Check out this URBAN audio Bible! I’m just going to say it: I love rap. I know this might be a surprise, but I’m not talking about the big names necessarily. I am just saying that I love the way you can string words together and weave them with rhymes and rhythms and… well, anyway I love rap. And, I love the Word. So many times we convince ourselves that we need to make the Word more inviting or exciting. The Truth is – you cannot add or take away from its power. I love how rapping the Bible could help you commit it to memory.
- I have a friend who lives in Philadelphia… and she knows Josh Schurr. When she mentioned him in her status on facebook, I thought it was about time I checked him out. He’s got an EP on bandcamp and itunes.
Category: creativity
Monday Madness
WEEKEND fun
Monday LINKAGE
Enjoy this list of wonderful things (arts, crafts, music, and generally things that have inspired in the past couple days).
- Sleeping at Last new music
- Slothpop new music
- beautiful mess blog
- inkismyfavorite blog
- Oh Joy blog
- Friends of the Challies blog
- this sermon by John Piper
- paper lanterns
- recycled fabrics
- Dr. Seahorse new cd you can download for FREE
Yes, folks. My post today is mostly pointing to inspiration instead of giving any, but there are more important matters… like planning for this weekend’s SLEEPOUT event to raise money for the Micah Project and cleaning up after a crazy weekend…. and enjoying many uninterrupted cups of coffee, accompanied by Miike Snow, Joy Williams, and Brooke Fraser.
I guess my stories about changing a car battery, learning to jerk in my living room, and making sushi at 4 am will have to wait for another day very soon!
love just flew like cRaZy
yesterday, I saw LOVE fly like CRAZY… and this is what it looked like:
wow!
music+memorization=GENIUS
Lately, I’ve been working on study skills workshops for several classes. Our students struggle to manage time, organize their materials, and (most importantly) recall the information they cram into their brains the night before a test.
I think these things are universal, but my job is not to figure out how similar are the struggles… I want to encourage the students to push through! In the process of all my searching (I didn’t have all those education courses, so it’s all new to me), I found some amazing resources.
I got so excited about this “Periodic Table of Elements” song that I showed it to everyone who came into my office (and some who happened to be standing outside!). Then, I started to look up more about this man, Tom Lehrer, who set all kinds of information to music. Two things made me love this: 1) learning happens 2) music happens.
After all my rambling about the beautiful gift and calling to THINK, I’ve been more aware of how thinking happens around me. How do the students think? How does the staff think? How do I think? What is my purpose, my methods, my result?
As I watched this video, I couldn’t help but make connections. We are made with minds to think and to seek knowledge. This, from the recent Desiring God National Conference,
“Knowledge that is loveless is not true knowledge. It’s imaginary knowledge, no matter how factual it is: ‘If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God’ (1 Corinthians 8:1-3)
Knowing as we ought to know is a knowing for the sake of loving. Loving God and loving people.” -J. Piper
So, if our knowledge – the true kind – has something other than empirical (numbers and words on pages with red grades glaring up top) implications, then maybe our ‘knowing’ must come about in a way that remains in our life after gradebooks close.
And for this reason, I love that our “knowing for the sake of loving” can come about as it did for David… through music. He wasn’t memorizing God’s attributes on a list so he could spit them out at the end of the week and move on to the list of God’s commands. No, as David was singing and playing and creating, he was hiding God’s Word in his heart.
How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word. With my whole heart I seek you; let me not wander from your commandments! I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you. Blessed are you, O LORD; teach me your statutes! With my lips I declare all the rules of your mouth. In the way of your testimonies I delight as much as in all riches. I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways. I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word. (Psalm 119:9-16 ESV)
I love this.
I love that even the process we choose to seek after knowledge can reflect our love for the Lord and can more firmly set the knowledge into our hearts. How many times have you praised God through the words in Psalms? When we set out to find our very strength in the Word, it becomes more than just memorization. It becomes bread.
Here’s a little example of Tom Lehrer in action.
monday: from bizarre to brilliant
You may not believe it, but Mondays are capable of bizarre to brilliant status.
When you start the day off with your clothes on backwards, you have to wonder how things are going to go down. Add to that a proclivity for post-weekend depression (especially after one so beautiful), and you’ve got yourself a recipe for Monday morning disaster!
It’s pushing 10 pm right now and I won’t hesitate in saying this Monday shone brilliantly! I want to pack it neatly into a pretty package and send it to you, so your day might open just as wonderfully, but since I cannot this list will have to suffice. I know all of these elements are a result of God‘s great goodness (and in spite of me), so maybe your Mondays can sparkle too!
REASONS WHY THIS MONDAY IS BRILLIANT
- Last night, I set out my outfit for today and therefore squeezed at least seven more minutes into my morning coffee-quiet time-journaling routine.
- My morning soundtrack is bumping with some new tunes.
- Before school even began, the smile would simply not be suppressed… a group huddled outside my office and I cannot tell you why, but I couldn’t help the top-of-the-morning tilt of the head and lopsided smile.
- Mondays always add an extra boost because we have chapel in the morning. There’s something about standing with my seniors in worship that gives me goosebumps every time. (I also love that they’ve been bringing their Bibles lately… nevermind that it might be due to a little baking bribery 🙂 A little bribery always worked just fine for my Aunt Jane during swimming lessons!
- We are gearing up for another SLEEPOUT this year on October 22nd and the first promo ran in chapel today… the excitement is building!
- Though it is temperaturally (made up that word) impossible in Honduras, it felt every bit like fall today, from the bold sun to the cool breeze… and I wanted to burst out singing Patty Griffin‘s “Heavenly Day” at the top of my lungs.
- Over lunch, I got to pray with a beautiful, dear co-worker and God made Himself so alive in those moments of community.
- Armed with a can of pumpkin and after beautiful discussion on every topic imaginable (so deep I missed our turn), I started what might make Mondays most beautiful this year. If that interests you, check this out.
- On the car ride home, I belted OUT some mad tunes from Starfield, Bright Eyes, and Joel Rakes.
- Now, night. I get to sleep sound, curled into my bed.
I praise God for brilliant Mondays!
let LOVE FLY like cRaZY
Delicious Adventures!
Last night, we experimented with a recipe from my Good Housekeeping Healthy Choices cookbook. The recipe was for tortilla pizza, but we transformed it into a lasagna and it was so wonderfully delicious! My roomie is a veggie (my affectionate term for the vegetarians in my life), so I’m always on the lookout for recipes that we would both like. This one turned out to be the BOMB!
Then, for dessert, I made baked apples with a recipe from the same cookbook in an effort to welcome fall to the rain and sun of this country that knows not the four seasons.
Tonight, I’m having my high school girls over for movies and THIS incredible apple cinnamon cupcake dessert! Doesn’t it look amazing?
Here’s the description from the website:
Shredded apple replaces some of the oil and keeps the cake moist in these cinnamon-spiked cupcakes. There is a generous amount of fluffy marshmallow frosting to mound or pipe on top for a festive look.
via Apple Cupcakes with Cinnamon-Marshmallow Frosting.
We’ll see how it turns out!
****UPDATE****
Here is the result of several hours in a warm kitchen… lots of laughter… and maybe a few foibles. The recipe is posted below the slideshow.
To make the CUPCAKES
- 1 1/2 cups shredded peeled apples
- 1/2 cup diced dried apples (I used a baked apple leftover from yesterday to save on cost)
- 3 tablespoons packed light brown sugar, plus 3/4 cup, divided (I used 1/2 cup loosely packed for less sweet)
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, divided
- 1/3 cup canola oil
- 2 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 3/4 cup whole-wheat pastry flour
- 3/4 cup cake flour
- 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup nonfat buttermilk (I made my own with milk and vinegar)
FROSTING
- 1 cup light brown sugar (I used 1/2 cup)
- 1/4 cup water
- 4 teaspoons dried egg whites (I used 2 egg whites)
- 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
- Pinch of salt
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon, plus more for garnish
PREPARATION
- To prepare cupcakes: Preheat oven to 350°F. Line 12 (1/2-cup) muffin cups with cupcake liners or coat with cooking spray (I made about 17 cupcakes with this recipe)
- Combine shredded and dried apples in a bowl with 3 tablespoons brown sugar and 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon. Set aside. Beat oil and the remaining 3/4 cup brown sugar in a large mixing bowl with an electric mixer on medium speed until well combined. Beat in eggs one at a time until combined. Add vanilla, increase speed to high and beat for 1 minute.
- Whisk whole-wheat flour, cake flour, baking soda, salt and the remaining 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon in a medium bowl.
- With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the dry ingredients and buttermilk to the batter, starting and ending with dry ingredients and scraping the sides of the bowl as needed, until just combined. Stir in the reserved apple mixture until just combined. Divide the batter among the prepared muffin cups. (The cups will be full.)
- Bake the cupcakes until a toothpick inserted into the center of a cake comes out clean, 20 to 22 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack for at least 1 hour before frosting.
- To prepare frosting: Bring 2 inches of water to a simmer in the bottom of a double boiler. Combine 1 cup brown sugar and 1/4 cup water in the top of the double boiler. Heat over the simmering water, stirring, until the sugar has dissolved, 2 to 3 minutes. Add reconstituted egg whites, cream of tartar and pinch of salt. Beat with an electric mixer on high speed until the mixture is glossy and thick, 5 to 7 minutes. Remove the top pan from the heat and continue beating for 1 minute more to cool. Add vanilla and 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon and beat on low just to combine. Spread or pipe the frosting onto the cooled cupcakes and sprinkle cinnamon on top, if desired.
bursting with joy
I’m sitting here, under my tree, with books stacked high to my right and my heart full to overflowing with thanksgiving. I just spent way too much time looking at old blog posts trying to find some musings from the book, “The Four Loves” by C.S. Lewis, but I came up empty-handed.
I’ll have to rely on my memory to relate the bliss I’m feeling and how I think Lewis explains it best.
It is only fitting, I might add, that I’m comfortable under my tree, where roots are stretching out underneath, reminding me where I find life.
Many of you are probably well aware of Lewis’s famous book on the four different types of love, but I want to just skim the surface of what has me flying so high tonight: friendship. Lewis suggests (apologies for my crude summary) that friendship draws out God-designed parts of us that we never knew we were hiding. In community, we are able to watch God reveal Himself in us because of the way we are made to live in community together.
Isn’t that magnificent?
Today is a repeat of so many other times in my life where I realize there is joy bubbling up in my soul that is set free when I place myself in community. It’s like a pen full of words that finds paper or a box full of seeds that finds ground.
Community is a place God has specifically designed to reflect Him and point to His glory. I love how C.S. Lewis says that God ordains our friendships. There are certain people ordained for certain times in our lives for a very certain purpose – to draw out ways in which we never knew we were capable of giving God glory.
How beautiful!
I can’t tell you all the ways this makes sense for today, but I can tell you that this day (beginning, middle, and end) made me ready to burst with the joy and inspiration of community. God’s design is so very good!
Here is one of the reasons for my joy… one of my students Alejandra! She has a wonderful way of drawing out something strange and silly and spectacular… and I always walk away blessed!
I hope you are intentionally putting yourself in the company of others who are pursuing Christ. You will be so blessed by the new ways you find to give God glory for His design!
As always,
.let LOVE FLY like cRaZY.
granola
I love it when people call me granola… although I don’t think I deserve it.
If you are not familiar, it’s a term people use to describe someone who is a bit on the rugged side, earthy, probably makes chai from scratch and can, without much effort, throw on anything and pull it off. Again… not me, but I love my granola friends!
I also love… making GRANOLA! My roommate brought a recipe she actually got from her roomie last year and we made it yesterday and WOW. So good! I thought I would indulge you with the recipe and encourage you to try your own variations and report back!
YUMMY GRANOLA
Preheat oven to 250 then combine wet/dry ingredients in separate bowls.
dry:
2 cups wheat flour
6 cups oats (steel cut if you can find em)
1 cups coconut
1 cup wheat germ
1 cup chopped nuts
3 T powdered milk
1t cinnamon (i would add a touch more)
1 t salt
(also add almonds, craisins, sunflower seeds, etc. to your liking)
wet:
1/2 cup water
1 cup oil
1 cup honey
2 t vanilla
Combine wet and dry together and mix thoroughly. Spread onto 2 cookie sheets and bake for 30 minutes. Flip and bake 30 more minutes. It’s best if it is spread out thin – crispier that way.
eat on its own, with yogurt or milk… all the time!!
pursuing lower pleasures
Here’s something I wrote in May when my friend Heather was visiting, but it certainly applies to tonight. I just got home from a MARVELOUS night of capture the flag with my favorite seniors, then dinner, then dinner #2, and then various antics following. I think my joy almost burst a couple times I was so full of it!
I laughed and laughed and laughed and I praise God for every surprising snort and crazy convulsion. I love laughter. I will have to write more about that later. For now, enjoy this REPOST from May.
——————–
After a crazy day, an afternoon filled with charades and catch phrase and laughter, and a typically cheesy serenade for the 11th grade girls… Heather and I went for coffee and finally caught up a bit. I chose the Latte Au-Lait, which means I am now WIDE awake and she’s zonked out (getting the sleep she needs so we can leave at 5:45 am to lead worship tomorrow at staff devotions).
I just want to write something quick tonight… maybe it will turn into a poem, but right now it’s just thoughts about pleasure. As I think about the students and this culture and (maybe) popular culture in general, I decide that our greatest sin is pursuing lower pleasures.
I know C.S. Lewis probably illustrated this idea more deeply than my brain can think it right now, but still it seemed a mini-revelation tonight.
God promises in Psalm 16:11 that in His presence there is FULLNESS of JOY and at His right hand there are PLEASURES forevermore. Wow! What a promise!
God promises the kind of joy that bursts out from inside our souls and overflows to uncontrollable laughter… the kind of joy that you can’t keep from showing on your face… the kind of joy you can’t wait to share with everyone you meet… the kind of joy that makes your heart feel like fire and makes you want to dance and shout and play in the rain…
NOT ONLY that, but also pleasures forevermore. God offers us pleasure that never ends – He created us with the desire for pleasures forevermore and He is delighted when we pursue the highest kind. He planted that little seed inside us, in the soil of our humanity, that tries to break the surface and soar toward the sun… all the ways our humanity longs to have pleasure can be traced back to the way we were created in His image to experience pleasures forevermore.
The moment I decide to pursue a less pleasurable pleasure than what I was created for, I am choosing sin. I know, it sounds confusing. Usually we associate pleasure with sin, but right now I am saying that we sin when we pursue less pleasure or lower pleasure. Because I know God created me and placed in me a desire to have infinite joy and pleasure, I know that anything less than a pursuit of THAT means two things:1. I am not experiencing the most pleasure possible (can only be found in and through God)2. I am trying to make lower pleasures fulfill my God-given desires for the BEST pleasure (which, of course is a fail from the start).
God created us, knows us, and delights when we are absolutely bursting with joy.
chocolate cupcakes
Normally, this day would have already ended. I’d be tucked in my bed and flipping pages (trying frantically to finish with Germany and Bonhoeffer so I can read over all the scratches I’ve made in the pages) until I finally fall asleep.
Not so tonight. After school and a teachers’ meeting, I met up with the first of two Vivians. We caught up and zoomed around town and jammed out to Coffey and smiled the perfect amount.
Then, I met up with Vivian number two and we endeavored to make chocolate cupcakes for tomorrow’s even with the seniors (a hopefully very competitive capture the flag game). We got creative about the frosting and thought up this new recipe:
2 cubes almond bark
1/2 stick butter
1/3 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup milk
1 – 2 tablespoons peanut butter
Add in this order over a medium-low heat stove top. Taste OFTEN and continue stirring. Taste for adjustments. Lick the spatula (then swear to not tell anyone you licked the spatula). Let it cool a bit and thicken. Add to cooled cupcakes and put sprinkles on top …..
ENJOY!
MUSINGS IN THE MIDST 