I Feel Like I Believe in Martians

I love love LOVE Donald Miller. Not only is he hilarious and refreshingly honest, I like how he thinks very deeply about God and life. I want to be his friend and have meaningful conversations with him all the time.

In this short interview, he says,

As a Christian, as someone who believes in Jesus and believes the Bible is the word of God, there are times that I wake up and say, "This is crazy! This is crazy that I believe in this. I feel like I believe in Martians!"

When I heard him say this, I was like, OMG YES. That's exactly how I feel about my faith. In my mind, it is the most bizarre thing ever, and yet, there is something within me that causes me to believe. I don't think I'll ever get over it.

American Idiot

I love musicals. I love rock music. How could I resist a rock opera based on music by none other than Green Day? I used to love Green Day in high school. I don't care for their lyrics, but their music can sometimes be very beautiful. I first heard about the musical "American Idiot" when I was in New York a couple years ago. They were set to perform on Broadway, but I wasn't in NY by the time they arrived. Now they are in LA and I knew I had to go.

And it was the worst musical I've ever seen! Most of the time I couldn't figure out if there was an actual plot. It was just a lot of cursing, drugs, sex, and "f-ck the world, I'm gonna do my own thing." The content was weak, BUT I thoroughly enjoyed the music. Hearing female vocals in duet with the guys' made it so much more moving. But good thing I bought the discount tickets for this one. I guess I got what I paid for.

Where Litter Becomes Art

This is Seattle's Gum Wall. One of my favorite parts of the city. When I was explaining it to my co-worker, she said, "They let them do this?!?" Yup. You're not supposed to stick your gum on other people's things, but if everyone is doing it, then it makes it okay.

I bought bubble gum for the first time in like 20 years and I was practicing blowing bubbles all day. Sadly, this was the biggest bubble I could make.

I have made my mark on Seattle!! Find my orange blob of gum in the center of a flower on the opposing wall. I started my own gum wall, OH yeah!

PTX

Pentatonix is the single best thing that has happened to music this year. Their style totally fits my taste in music. This one is freakin amazing.

Facebook-Free

I deactivated my facebook account a while ago, and it has been so liberating. I used to surf facebook every day (second to checking email) simply because new information, pictures, and messages were being posted every minute. Its not like the facebook beginnings when everything was mostly static and all you had was a profile and wall. Now you can post your entire life on facebook, updating it every minute if you wanted to. I suddenly knew the mundane details of people I barely knew, as well as good friends. Time goes by, minute by minute, and you realized you wasted a couple hours viewing, commenting, and gaming.

Now that I don't have facebook, my computer usage has dropped considerably. After a few minutes of checking and responding to emails, I honestly don't have much to do online. So I just get offline and move on to other important things. Its been great. Yeah, it would be nice to know what's going on with my friends through facebook, but it feels more real when I can ask them to their face, "How are you?" and not already know the answer simply because I read their status update. I feel like it authenticates my true friendships and frees my time for other interests.

North Korea

I just finished an engaging book about the lives of North Korean defectors called Nothing to Envy. I always kinda knew about North Korea, but I don't think I was ever aware until reading this book. When I was reading through it, I was constantly in shock and in anger about the condition of the country. The dictatorship. The famine. The economy. The brainwashing. I just couldn't believe it. You hear all the stats in the news, but they are just numbers. But when you hear the stories of people who lived and suffered through it...man, it just hits the heart. The images that stick in my mind are the tree bark they would pulverize to make digestible, the man who was publicly executed for a "crime" committed merely to survive, the children with normal-sized heads but incredibly stunted limbs, and how Chinese dogs ate more food than North Korean doctors. Crazy stuff. Ridiculous stuff!

I also watched this documentary of Lisa Ling following a humanitarian eye doctor into North Korea. It is a rare moment when Kim Jong-Il allows any foreigners into his country.

So after the blind are healed and able to see again, they immediately praise the great leader, Kim Jong-Il, whom they worship as a god. They believe he is so good to them and all blessings they receive come from him. They adore him. My initial reaction to their outbursts of praises to Kim Jong-Il were, "These people are psycho! Don't they know that this man is the reason for their suffering?" But I also had this wild and crazy thought that these people don't look so different than Christians. Think about it. When suffering comes, we learn to still praise God because we believe He is good. When healing comes, we credit God instead of the doctor that treated us. In a way, we're a bit "psycho" ourselves. Non-Christians look at us and say, "Why do you believe God is so good if He allowed all this shit to happen?" I don't know, sometimes I feel that Christian spirituality is a little too far-fetched for me, a little crazy to actually believe. Yet He grips my heart in a way I can't really explain to others, or even to myself!

If anything, I guess this shows how our hearts really were created to worship something or someone. Its just a matter of who or what.

My Heros

Couple months ago, I blogged about a fictional book I read titled, A Cup of Friendship. The main character is a single woman from America that runs a coffee shop in the heart of Afghanistan. I love this woman. She is strong and fearless and compassionate. The part that touched me the most was in the beginning of the story. She walks into the local Womens Center, and while she's there, she notices a dirty, beaten-up young woman pleading for a place to stay. (She was a young widow sold to the "Mafia" as payment for her uncle's debt owed to them. But they beat her up and dumped her on the side of the road because they found out she was pregnant. Meaning, she's utterly worthless.) She had no family, no money, no home. She was an unmarried woman with child, and that was the ultimate shame. And she looked for help from the agency that supposedly supports women like this. Yet all they could offer her was one night stay, but then they'd have to kick her out into the streets. And from there, her only option was to be someone's slave or prostitute...or just be killed.

And that's when my hero steps in. She takes this desperate young woman into her home and gives her a job in her coffee shop, all the while knowing that an unmarried pregnant woman brings shame not just upon herself, but for everyone associated. Taking in this woman could have ruined her business and put their very lives in danger. But my hero takes the risk because her compassion runs deep, and she values this woman's life even though everyone in society spits on her or wants her dead. She gives her hope and a future.

I want to be a woman like that. In the very core of my being, I want to be a woman like that. She reminds me of the mom (Sandra Bullock's character) in The Blind Side. If you've seen the movie, you know what I mean. Ahhh, that stuff really gets me. I want to be an instrument of God's hope and healing, but sometimes I wonder if my heart has the capacity to give like that. God hasn't given me such an opportunity yet, but I hope--I HOPE!--God will prepare me for that day.