Let Us Now Lay With A Woman....

LOOK MY IN THE EYES!

I dare you.... 

LOOK!

Can you see it? The fear?  Can you feel?  His hand is covering my mouth... as he presses into me... and he whispers things... Things I cannot bear to speak.... With one hand he covers my mouth... I can smell the cigarettes and alcohol on him... and with his other... he touches me....

I try to retreat..... but I hear the door open....

As shards of light break into the room.... I see three or four men step in...

I swallow... and I disappear.... I know that these are just the first ones.....When I come to the next morning... the stench of those men is still in the air... I barely remember anything... 

How many of them were there? after a while I just see black.... I try to sit up, and I feel the stickiness of my depravity all over me... the door open and in comes my pimp...

I jump to my feet, still sore from last night... and he throws a towel at me.... demanding I clean off.... He looks at me.... half with lust... half with hatred.... as he walks out of the room....

They took me when I was a little girl.... and for two years I have been moved from city to city, country to country... they load us up into trucks, like dogs....

20 of us.... 

Last month, Laura died.... we were on the truck.... and she'd been in too long... she pulled herself to the wall and went to sleep....

At least... I thought she was asleep....

When we arrived, the men dragged us off the truck-bed like sacks of grain, sometimes slapping us, others.... touching us..... we were lead into a little room... 

The Show Room..... 

The Man came in again... ordered us to undress..... snapping his fingers at us... a few moments later... entered in the buyers...

Like cattle they poked us... stroking their hands down our sides... 

inspecting our flesh... like a rancher does to stock... 

It seemed like forever, the poking... rough hands feeling around me.. 

Now.... came time to 

test the merchandise...

Each one of the buyers selected his favorite girl... and the Pimp snapped his fingers again....

The men from the truck walked in... and directed each of us to a room.... here... we waited...

One by one... like cars.... we were test-driven...

You think I am just a Vagina for you to masturbate??  Is that all I am to you?  Do you even notice my face?  Or is is merely my breasts... the things that interest you... Am I just a warm thing?  Can you see my eyes?  Can you feel the pain? When you bring your hand to my face, do you not see me shudder?  How can you not see???  HOW ARE YOU SO BLIND!?

Look into our eyes....  Can you see us?  Go on....

Look..... tell me... can you still hate me even then?  Can you still do these things?

Can you still sit in your bedroom.... and watch them as they take what little is left of me?

Can you?

 They took me when I was little.... I didn't understand... at first.... I was so young....  So much life.... but now.... look in my eyes!  Can you see how dead they are?  Look at what I've become.... how could anyone get out??? How could anyone want this... how could anyone ever want this?

Sold... Bought.. Rented... I am someones sex-toy for a night... Used... Taken.. Beaten... Drugged... Slave... They call me Bitch...  They call me Whore.... Cunt.... tramp....
so many things they call me... everything except my name...
My Name is Anna.... I have to say it to myself.... so I won't forget.... Anna.... Anna.... I love you Anna....

 Can you look yet?
You should know...
Its not just in Asia... Its not just in Africa... Europe.... or some far off place...
50,000 of us come here.... many of us are sitting in the trucks at your gas stations...

In the last ten years.... over 750,000 of us have been sold here... in the US....

We're not someone elses problem... its here....
We're trapped....








Will you listen now??

We are unloved...

And yet you sit at your computer...

You watch what they do to us...You witness our pain... you witness their crimes... 

Some of you even like it.. you like the pain.... you like to see the terrible things they do.... 

For now... 

All I can do is survive.... 

Will you listen???

"Come Back Home" ~School of Worship

To all the weak the meek the poor, I am knocking at your door
To you who search for one more high, Embrace the cross on which I died
To you who sell yourself for love, But never look up above
Your worth is found in something more, a God you've never seen before
I paid for you to enter in, So let the work of grace begin

Come now I will take you as you are, you have never gone too far
My mercy still remains
My love has broken every chain, you will never be the same
Dear child please come back home

To you who think that all is lost, that life is far to much a cost
To all with razors in the dark, the scars go deep within the heart
To you who strive pursue and fight, but nothing seems to turn out right
I hope that you can understand, what you're searching for is in my hands
I paid for you to enter in, So let the work of grace begin

Come now I will take you as you are, you have never gone too far
My mercy still remains

My love has broken every chain, you will never be the same
Dear child please come back home
Come back home

Love is lost in a sea so brilliantly, tossed around and mocked
By the soldiers by the families who were at the cross
Women children men and thieves, harlots dying and in need
Love is cheap, you can buy it on the streets as drunken men walk by
Refusing life and drinking bitter wine to end their strife
With the women who have said that their love to them is dead
But God is strong and He will heal the hearts of all who come to sing His song
Jesus Christ is Lord of all, and He has reconciled the fall
Of all man with His own life, with the blood that paid the price
Yeah his blood has paid the price, Jesus' blood has paid the price to redeem

Come now I will take you as you are, you have never gone too far
My mercy still remains
My love has broken every chain, you will never be the same
Dear child please come back home
Come back home

"The Art of living, lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on"-Henry Ellis

The art of living, lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.... Ellis couldn't be more right.  Whats more, how few of us then live, that is, truly live?
Being a barista, I have a unique opportunity to encounter a pletheara of people from all sorts of backgrounds, upbringings, philosophies, religions, and personalities.  I have the chance to see people at their very worst (before the morning joe), at their best, and somewhere in between.  This venue open up a million screens to see how we live; some of us come in with our burdens, our joys, our stresses, and our ploys, scheming at all times to "keep calm, and carry on."  Few of us are truly living, as described by Ellis; many of us are stranded in the wasteland of nostalgia, many suspended in to pursuit of what could be, and still more trudging through thier days "living in the moment."  No one who constantly surveys the horizon could permit himself to hold on to where he was, or is at, for fear that it would entangle him, restricting his forward motion.  None of those nostalgic introspectators can ever truly let go of what happened, even just enough to reach the next rung on the ladder.  And the thrillseekers in basking in "the moment" have neither held on to their past, nor let go to look ahead, leaving them in a freefall to the bottom.  We must learn to hold on to what should be maintained, and let go of what should be lost.
Philosophies spanning the ages have attempted to oblidge this need, but seemingly always faltering to one side or the other.  I find this especially troubling as I cannot let go of the things Ive said or done, and cannot seem to hold on to what matters to me most, and I simply cannot live "in the moment"  with this much baggage and that many "what ifs.
A  connundrum even more incideous when you realize that at any given moment I have no way of being certain of any emotion being my own.The last six months have left a scorched earth in their wake, I left this place to seek a refuge, pursue an idea, encounter God... upon my arrival I quickly discovered that God had other plans.. shortly then after sending me home again, and now, as I look behind me, I see I have left some of the most influential people in my life  behind, and upon this prodigal return; there was no ring or fattened lamb, no party to celebrate or commemorate; simply slowly re-inserting (as if back into the matrix).
If one isn't careful, the matrix can reassimilate your mind back into itself, your ideas of reality and fantasy become progressively similar, and before you know it you cannot see where the rabbithole ends.  Here is where I find myself tonight, suspended between realities, but there is no turning back, I've swolled the red pill... I cannot unsee what I have seen. 
I must remember that my life was lived, things were said, more things done, more still awaiting their consequences.   Though, now, after having unplugged, I can see a faint discrepensy in the shifting scenery of my "reality."  Once daily things are now painted with this obviousness distancing them enough see through their false presentation into their cores, revealing a lie. 
The heart wrenching thing is watching as those, you once called brothers, sisters, and compatriots, accept the lies as pure truth, without the slightest hesitation.  Now, it seems, I am alone.

If the art of living, lies in a fiune mingling of letting go and holding on, then I must let go (at least to some degree) my transgressions, forgiving myself for their idiocy, and I must hold on to the little beams of light I can find, gripping them white nuckled and tenacious. 

Fair enough, and a tall order to boot.. but what then?  if I have loosened or released  that which I must and ferociously retained the most important, must take a step forward, or I will reintegrate with mediocrity.  Like a cancer it waits, seizing every chance to inhibit my goal, but I will not be controlled by an impulse any longer.

Painful as it will always be; to those who have begun their walk out of my life, I release you.. I will hold on to you no longer.  I will cling to the single constant I have; Christ.  He, being the only immutable constant in my life, I will surrender once again, and as many times after, and I will do what I have been charged to do.

So long as breath is in my lungs, and Christ renewing my mind, I will not permit myself to crumble under the falty reasonings of desperation.

Rough, uncut, and unrefined as it may be... hense begins my mingling.

"If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?" John Wooden

A thought that has been crossing my mind many times the last few days.

"If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?"

I have had the unique and ever so challenging experience of fulfilling Shakespeare's  proverb;

"t'is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all"

 I spent merely a short four months with my dear brothers, sisters, and friends at the Honor Academy; but as we all know at the HA, one day is as long as a week, a week as short as three days, three days like a month, and a month passes faster than a week should!  by the end of four months my heart and mind couldn't even agree if it was four months or 2 years. Never the less, it felt like a timeless eternity that I spent with them.  Fighting through the transitions, the drama, the conflict, the PEARL, LTEs, MAN-Fasts, Core Unity, and other unique trials.  Though looking back it seems almost trivial, slight issues, unimportant arguments, pointless disagreements, and small battles in comparison to the sorts we face on the home front.  Though, for those of you who've never experienced the Matrix Effect, being unplugged for a period of time, it would make believing the wars we fight at home and in the rest of our lives nigh unintelligible. However, for those of us who've unplugged once or twice, the fights we experienced while we were together, though petty, brought us together as though in a war.
All of which was to say, that though it was only four months, a mere four months, and yet these kids are some my closest friends!  The first time in over four years that men have been able to claim that spot in my life, and the first time in a long while that people have weaseled their way into my heart to the level at which these kids have.  I say kids, no, they're not kids, there younger than me, by one or two years, but I love them like they were my kids... my girls, daughters and sons, kids I poured into.. they'll soon be turning and pouring into someone else...
My four, very short months, passed me by like a fluttering blink of an eye.  In the midst of it, it felt like eternity unending, but now I struggle to maintain coherent time between events, days, and weeks.. my four months passed me by, quickly, ever so quickly, and it occurs to me that the Italian Satirist Dario Fo was dead on when he wrote "know how to live the time that is given you."
I tried to pour out all I had, however I excused my shortcomings by pleading overworked, tired, and busy.  I didn't take the time to do what was the most important.  I regret not pouring out fully, not giving everything I had.  I tried to dump a little more out my very last day, but one day is all too short for some of what should have been said.
I've learned, through the memories, and the disheartened regrets, I now have grown a little, learned a little, matured a little, and hopefully wont make the same mistake again.... soon.
It's time to make each moment intentional don't you think?
I didn't once expect to be in Texas only the four months, who knows just how long I will be in St. Cloud?  How long will I be here?  Or there when the time comes for me to be there, its tremendous to see that I have such a chance to waste opportunity... not any more.

I have the time, I have the reason, I will be making the time.

Consider this a bit of wisdom learned quite recently.

The Hardest Part-

First let me say I apologize for my tardiness in this post... if I am not mistaken, its among the three day mark that I committed to blog every day, yet as God endowed me with a mind of great deductive reasoning I certainly used it to its fullest potential by typing that blog out on my friend's computer as mine has thrown itself a pitty-party by getting a virus.  This deductive mind hadn't comprehended that I can't blog daily with no computer... Never the less, I am apologizing less for your sake because obviously these posts haven't been of great inspiration to you I'm sure, yet I made that commitment and I hadn't quite realized it's implausibility.

Now, on to the actual content of this post.

The time-stamp this blog will come with makes the following statement redundant yet I will say it anyway; it is 6:53AM on Thursday November 17th, and I am sitting here at my desk in Mission Control (That's quite literally its name) of the Global Expeditions Call Center.  Today marks the starting of the clock to my potential  voyage home.  But a little background first.
A few weeks ago, my teetering back and forth between staying here at the Honor Academy and going home to St. Cloud came to a head with the mental resolution that if I am truly supposed to be going home, then I should hope to stay at least until Christmas, that being the most financially advantageous choice.  Consequently my grandma had sent me an email the same day, where I read almost verbatim the same words I had expressed to the darkness hours before that evening.  This is, what we in the Church, call "Conformation."  A little while had passed, and all my musings about it all had merely become a faint memory in the harried life we live here as Interns.  Then, I received an email.  This email basically reminding me that I have no more days to spend fundraising and consequently will be needing to meet, yet again, with the Director of Intern Relations to discuss a final Financial deadline before I am "Financially Dismissed."  And that is now where you find me, blogging, as I had said at my desk.
Life seems to be quite interesting.  Whatever impact I may have hoped to have on people here is fading "confirming" all the more that my time here is done.  I had taken the initiative to pack all of my things getting ready for whenever they determined I was done, and apparently that sent ripples throughout the dorm.  I had whispered a mere side-note that I may be leaving by weeks end, and now the questions from all sides have been streaming in as if it had been broadcast on CNN.  
These questions followed by poignant comments, and memories I hadn't prepared myself for.  I know that I will miss people here, some that surprised me, other of course I anticipated, but I can say that I had no idea I had said enough things to spur my roommates into a "quote-a-thon" my roommate Max said last night "When you leave we'll be quoting TCisms for the rest of our lives."  Now Max is often prone to exaggeration, but I have this urking feeling he was more serious this time.
The hardest part, in my opinion is the fact that no matter where you go, when you go you miss those you had around you, and when you return to those you left, you cannot help but miss those you left to return.
Seems an endless conundrum.

I am excited to see those whom I left, and am excited to see how they've grown, to see how life has progressed in my absence and to try to find my spot again.  Never the less I shall be missing my CORE, Max, Britt, Steven, Bobby, the Brothers of 3114, and of course the sisters.
This predicament seems relentless.

The hardest part about going, is the leaving, the hardest part about leaving is the missing, the hardest part about the missing is troublesome fact that coming or going you're always leaving somewhere, and as long as there is a somewhere there was a someone, and more often than not many someones.

The hardest part then, is that leaving means missing, and you can never get to where you're going without leaving where you are, and leaving those who were with you...

So heres to missing friends, of sorts I hadn't meant to miss.. I raise my glass and tip my hat to you all..  and dare I say it.. I  love you. 

Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc

It comes to my attention that my friend and fellow blogger Bethany Sue author of "Sweetly Breathing ~:" had a point when she said this;

"I don't know why, but last night I decided that I needed to try and make a blog post everyday. Even if it's small and not as significant as others (such as this) I just figured it would be a good idea to start doing this. ..."

 So, I will take this to heart, and you might expect more submissions than normal.  Here and there, I may submit more than one a day, I'm finding there's always just so much to be said, and sometimes no way to tie it all together...

With that I will sign off this blog and begin my next one haha.
Hopefully the more regal among you will not be annoyed :]

Holy

Some of you know me, and some of you know me well enough to know that for all of my religious zeal, I am not a typical Christian zealot.  The typical zealot will respond to you entirely out of scripture almost as though they have no understanding of where you are coming from, and it might almost seem that, their best intentions not withstanding, they are essentially loveless.. This is not how I do business.  However, that doesn't mean that I discount the value of the scriptures.  I do not.  I am far from that platform.  Now, one thing of the zealots I have always envied is the apparent ability for them to get lost in a moment of worship.  This is something that eludes me.  For better or for worse my mind simply operates at a rapid speed.  Throw in ADD, and now toss a dash of theoretical thought and philosophy. You can walk into a room and be awed by the lights, and the mood, and the sounds, but I walk in and for a few seconds I have already processed the cool lights and mood, the sounds, and now I find myself awed by the physics. I am taken aback by the psychology, and have likely moved into the philosophical by the first five minutes...  The ramifications of this in a context of worship are enormous.  I can start out well intentioned, but I will soon find myself having debated an issue in my head, and the only thing that reminded me of this is the song ended and the next one has begun.  Yet, I also realized I was singing the whole time.  My heart becomes heavy because of this.. I cannot seem to just lose sight of the world in the presence of a God who transcends my four dimensions!  This is a problem for someone who puts the emphasis I do on my relationship with Christ.  However, today... today I saw this happen. My mind has been all over the place today, this weekend, and life is crazy!  But today at worship, we just sang one song.  Condensed it comes out as just these lines.
"King of Glory, have your glory"
"King of Glory, have your glory"
"only one words comes to mind, only one word can describe"
"only one words comes to mind, only one word can describe"
"only one words comes to mind, only one word can describe"
"only one words comes to mind, only one word can describe"
"Holy"
"Holy yeah"
"is the lord God almighty"
This song lasted 20min.  But I was lost in the idea of "Holy"
For the first time in my life, my brain was driven and focused on this one idea, and theres enough inside that one word to occupy my multi-processing brain.
It was a beautiful thing.  I can't stand here and say that a great word from the heavens descended upon me, but I can say when I opened my eyes, half of the room was on the floor... the other half had their eyes closed, and Mr. Olsson was praying out the worship set, it was simply a beautiful moment.

My words at the end, the first utterence out of my mouth... was so articulate, so poetic, the stuff of classical writers... this one word of repute and import, this one syllable of academic prowess, was simply and understatedly

....... "wow"........