So this morning I woke up at the Hoards as I usually do on Tuesday mornings and came down to find the house to myself. I poured myself a nice cup of coffee and realized there was a book on the table called, The Christian WOMAN...Set Free (women freed from second-class citizenship in the Kingdom of God.). The title intrigued me and scared me a bit, so I started to read. I might add that it was written by a man! Yay for wonderful men! So I read 3/4 of the book this morning. It is an easy read, written as though I'm listening to a story on the radio.. quite funny. It gives a broad overview of where the thought of women as second class citizens began and how secured itself early on in the church. That section made me very sad, hearing the terrible things Greek philosophers and popes said and did to women.

But then came the chapters on Jesus and Paul and the early early church and how they were the greatest liberators women had seen. The chapter on Jesus made me cry. It was as if for the first time I saw how Jesus really was so radical to women. And Paul, I think for a long time I was not sure how I felt about Paul and his attitude toward women, but reading this chapter made it able to see how revolutionary Paul was too about women and how wrongly he is quoted. I was able to see Paul and his personality and really like and appreciate him, I was able to see myself as his friend back in the day! haha I know that sounds really odd but it helps me understand and know the Bible as well as people more. To be able to put myself in the situation with them.

This book is not super in depth and intellectual but offers a broad history... it does cite some books however that I would really like to get into. And I realize I have not finished it yet so it could spiral downwards after I post this but I wanted to share how its helping me a girl who feels strongly about women and their roles on earth and loves jesus, but could not reconcile the teachings in the Church (not particularly my church but the broader church) with her gender.

Beginnings

It has been almost a month I’ve been moved into south Baltimore. I decided I wanted to blog my journey of living life in the hood, but as usual life has gotten the best of me with starting a new university and moving and the lack of internet at my house. So one month in and I will start.

The first week was exciting and lonely all at once. My roommates are lovely but extremely busy themselves as one is a youth pastor in the city, the other visits his fiancé, and the other commutes to Virginia for seminary (! This last one blows my mind. I can barely handle the commute to my school which is just outside the city!) I felt though I was just twenty minutes from my old residence in a totally different world. It was exciting, but I mourned the ability to walk into any of my siblings rooms and have an instant companion. It took just one week of figuring out the city and my new routine and fixing up the house and the loneliness and mourning was gone. I love my new house; an abandoned row house in the area of the city in which our church and bethel Presbyterian have been ministering to the women caught in prostitution.Tom bought the house and did some renovation so that we might be a positive presence in the community.

About a week ago I met the neighbor boy Kaleek (I’ll have to make sure that’s how you spell his name when I see him next). The kids in the city just break my heart, I’ve been crying a lot about them. So I was very excited to meet him, and we’ve been tight ever since. Last night he knocked on my door to say hi and introduce me to his friends, so I brought out some paints and spent the evening painting with him. Through him I’ve met his mother and some of his mother’s friends, who I think were quite pleased that I was playing with the kids. Kaleek has been my connection to the neighborhood.

Instead of writing a book I’ve decided to share the highlights of my last three weeks:

• When it rains the ceiling in my room leaks, I have to put pots down, this weekend the ceiling started falling in!
• I’ve loved staying with the Hoards in North Baltimore Monday and Tuesday nights when my classes end to late to come home. Good friends are such wonderful gifts!
• I went to the Book Thing, where they give away free books; you can take as many as you want! Devin took about 100… crazy.
• I’ve found ALDI the glorious cheap grocery store!
• I’ve been eating mostly rice, pasta, beans, and vegetable dishes, (finding I can be a pretty good cook and a pretty thrifty, almost vegan lady) when a lovely lady in the church found out she bought me a bag of meat!
• Daisy so kindly donated kitchen and house utensils to my house.
• We’ve caught 2 more mice making a total of 12 kills.
• I’ve been cleaning and fixing up the kitchen and dining room… even put up our first picture… the house is starting to become a home… so much more to do!
• Dan has been an incredible support and handy man (hooray for handymen!) throughout the process even though he has been moving too.

I'm procrastinating the world's most retarded paper to write ever....aaaahhhh h except the next one that i will have to write for this ed psych class... the class is great the papers are pointless... and i usually don't mind writing. ugggh.. ok i just had to get it out of me. back to writing.

Spring Awakening

As spring is coming... i'm feeling this rebirth in of the things I love. I'm absolutely loving my art class right now and all the charcoal i'm using... it feels so good. I've been getting my whole body into it, and my professor is awesome. It is all making me think back to last spring and my outside art creating... allowing me to become excited to do more in a few weeks time! And i'm feeling a bit of writing popping up in my head... nothing in full, but phrases and words... it feels as though i'm on the verge.

Today I went crazy with a q-tip cleaning my cell phone... haha. I heard it holds tons of bacteria, which breeds because its kept in warm dark places. haha... there is a bit of OCD in me still. Also loving my ed psych class, its great in practical application.

O holy night.

O Holy Night is my absolute favorite Christmas song. No matter how mad the season seems to get, whenever I hear it I cannot help but pause and think of Jesus, his birth and new life and my absolute gratitude and love that he came to set us free. I can't make it through it without crying when we sing my favorite verse:

Truly He taught us to love one another,

His law is love and His gospel is peace.

Chains he shall break, for the slave is our brother.

And in his name all oppression shall cease.

Wow, its just so powerful i feel it speaks for itself. I am hoping that this Christmas season and through out the year(and my life) I can know and live this truth more.

What we found was there always

I found this quote today in my notebook... i remember seeing it in one of the works in the "All Faiths Beautiful" exhibit at the American Visionary Arts Museum. I found it quite beautiful so I wanted to post:

"I had such a hopeless desire for you til I saw how your light yearned for me too. I pushed and I pushed til I saw it was you who had already drawn me to every good that I knew."

This Bleeding World

I've had another interesting experience today. I went to my 11:30 Bio lecture and as it turned out only four other students showed up. It being an absolutely gorgeous sunny warm autumn day my professor suggested we take our small study session outside. And since it was just women, of course we got to talking about life, men, marriage, weight, death, spirituality, pyschics, child birth. It was really quite amazing how open we all were with eachother, especially my professsor, who told us weepily about the death of her brother and her failing 23 year marriage.

This led to another one of the girls telling us about how she was recently left waiting at the altar for her fiance. She finished with how she wished she had seen a pyshic before her wedding, because then she would've known and could've been prepared. And it reminded me of a mother recently talking of her grown son, "I'm worried if he goes into ministry because he might get hurt." Ah. Here we are; hurt.
How we wish we could protect and prevent it, but we can't. And while, it is AWFUL, it is part of life. We have all experienced it, we have all had to deal with hurt. Life is full of it. Yes, hurt it sucks and its universal. I've found though it is through pain that we grow. I've learned much more from pain and hard things, than from pleasant. I feel more compassion because of the hurt. I say this only of course, because I can give my hurt to Jesus, he reaches out and touches and feels it with me and takes it. Because really though I've learned through my pain, the only reason I'm not crippled by it is because I don't have to bear it alone. And of course I still have loads I'm sure I need to work on.
And it made me sad and glad. Glad that I have a Savior who isn't afraid of my messy ugly hurt. Glad that I can look back now on past hurt and have grown and pushed through it. And yet sad because the world is full of so much hurt. People who don't deal with it, who want to hide from life or love, people walking around practically crippled with pain from hurt. And with this in my mind I must do as Donald Miller says we need, " to hold our hands against the wounds of this broken world, to stop the bleeding."