sara tavares

just found a musician i like. i think her search for reclaiming her identity through her music resonates with me. An interview in the guardian gives a bit of inside into her background and music. She says that her songs come to her like prayers.... "just me and my guitar, God and my imagination". anyway... here is sara tavares

politics and peace

For some reason, I'm fascinated with the US elections at the minute. I'm not really sure why... I just find it so interesting... the issues, the personalities, the debates, the late night vote counts, the newspapers' analysis etc. Just to the get in the politics mood, I've watched loads of West Wing on my week off.. maybe a little too much... I feel like I still have Aaron Sorkin's quick dialogue bouncing around my head and feel as if I should be walking through corridors somewhere while discussing how to resolve the tragedy that's unfolding in Kenya. I've liked some of Obama's speeches this week... maybe it's cause i've been thinking about hope recently and he seems to talk about it all the time. Yesterday in his victory in SC he said, "While we breathe, we will hope..."

Talking about a different hope, CH Spurgeon said that "Hope itself is like a star... only to be discovered in the night of adversity."

*****
I've also been thinking about contentment today. I'm starting a new semester tomorrow and I do have a peace that I'm still in the right place... even if I'm sometimes still restless for something else, something more...
Francis Schaeffer said "When I am not contented, it's because I am not letting God be God, or I have ceased to be thankful."
On the other hand, Max Lucado states that "Unhappiness on earth cultivates a hunger for heaven. By gracing us with a deep dissatisfaction, God holds our attention..."

I'm not sure which of those two perspectives I'm thinking today... Maybe both: I need to let God be God, but continue to thirst too for the deeper, the higher...

So, back to Spurgeon, (who said that contentment is one of the flowers of heaven...) my prayer for the start of a new term is this:
"May there come over [my] spirit a deep calm as when Christ hushed both winds and waves. May [I] feel not only resignation to your will but delight in it."

hope

Over the last few months I've had a bit of the winter blues echoing the first few lines of this song Moving Pictures, Silent Film...

Oh wake me please when this is over
Oh when the ice is melted away
And the hunger returns...

I have to say that today, I feel awake and a hunger has returned. The ice is melting (even if I’m dreaming of the African sunshine). A new chapter-- I know it sounds cliché for the new year and all that, but somehow life seems more hopeful that it has in a while. I know I’m probably just swayed by feelings and tomorrow I may return to winter lethargy. But today I stand up and stretch, ready for all that is ahead. I can hear clearly the songbird of hope that Emily Dickinson talks about:

"Hope" is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops, at all

And sweetest, in the Gale, is heard
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land
And on the strangest Sea
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb of Me.

And I know hope does not disappoint. So, here’s to 2008 and HOPEfully a new start to this blog’s ramblings…