Searching for Identity

This is why we keep hoping that identities will come our way because the rest of the world is so confusing: everything else is turning, but identities ought to be some stable points of reference which were like that in the past, are now and ever shall be, still points in a turning world.
-- Stuart Hall

Since freshman year in college, I have been fascinated with the Jewish religion and culture. My love and excitement for the Judaism perplexes the majority of those who know me. I have been known to search wide eyed in the Kosher section of supermarkets (Phil just LOVED Passover pizza). I've attempted to learn multiple Hebrew words. Apparently some people think I look Jewish, and at one point, friends needed to point out to a guy that I was "a Gentile" (I just learned the Yiddish word for that is "goy"). Tomorrow night, I am going to my first Jewish service at Chabad. It's spoken entirely in Hebrew, but I won't mind much :)

I have often wondered how this all fits in with my Christian identity. I have been disappointed at the lack of integration of the Jewish roots of Christianity. After all, if salvation comes from the Jews, if Jesus was Jewish, where did it all go?

It is important to understand that according to Christians, and thus myself, Jesus was the fulfillment of the Old Testament Messianic prophecies. That Jesus was the final and perfect sacrifice, bridging the inescapable casm between people and the Holy God Almighty. It is impossible and sacreligious to seperate the two testaments: the New Testament is the fulfillment of the Old, and the Old gives the validity for the New. Yet I feel like many Christians do not fully appreciate or understand the intricacies of this relationship. And when it is understood, how much more beautiful we see Jesus as the Christ.

Case point: This Sunday at sundown begins the High Holy Day of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, where the Jewish people fast for 24 hours while reflecting upon the Lord and their sins from the previous year. Historically, Yom Kippur is the day that the Lord forgave the Jewish people for worshipping the golden calf and Moses was given the second tablets. According to "The Jewish Book of Why," the Jews believe that the Lord decides on Yom Kippur who is forgiven and who is not for the new year, which is why the day is solemn and not necessarily a celebration. It is my interpretation that the Jews understood that their sacrifices were not perfect, that they could not fully cleanse them.

Enter the Messiah, Jesus Christ, as the perfect sacrifice. The Book of Hebrews explains the significance:

For the gifts and sacrifices that the [Old Testament] priests offer are not able to cleanse the consciences of the people who bring them. For that old system deals only with food and drink and ritual washing--external regulations that are in effect only until their limitations can be corrected. So Christ has now become the High Priest over all the good things that have come. He has entered that great, perfect sanctuary in heaven, not made by human hands and not part of this created world. Once for all time he took blood into that Most Holy Place, but not the blood of goats and calves. He took his own blood, and with it he secured our salvation forever. Under the old system, the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a young cow could cleanse people's bodies from ritual defilement. Just think how much more the blood of Christ will purify our hearts from deeds that lead to death so that we can worship the living God. For by the power of the eternal Spirit, Christ offered himself to God as a perfect sacrifice for our sins. (Hebrews 9:9-14)

Why do we need a Savior? Because our actions, not matter how correct we try to make them, can never get to the root of the problem. This is why the sacrifices had to be offered year after year. This is why Jesus spoke so much about the condition of the heart and the mind: because HE was the solution to the problem. He was pointing to Himself. THIS is why on the Day of Atonement, Christians can "approach the throne of grace with confidence", because our sacrifice, Jesus Christ, was enough.

Blessed be Your Name. Shalom.

One is the loneliest number...

Today I invited people to come over for a movie and homemade cookies. No one came.

As an isolated event, no big deal, but this has been a reccuring theme. I guess I just don't have the gift for group event management, unless it involves a pool (which raises some interesting questions...)

So this evening I read up on Orientalism and Imperialism while drinking a glass of red wine, and wrote 2 songs. One might suppose this meants I was productive. However, the entire time I was trying and hoping to find more social options with my cell phone at arms length. Everything else was more busy work than production.

I don't doubt that tonight was supposed to be alone. Maybe my desire for company is on the brink of gluttony. That I want to be with people for the sake of activity than for sustanence. I know that sounds really selfish, and I don't want it to seem that I don't love my friends. I do, I really do. I might not show it well, but I really do love you guys. But the issue is more that I refuse to be alone. I will do most anything to not be alone. And when I am alone, I begin to think that maybe it's because I'm not loved. I can be so egocentric.

I sorta set myself up for this though. Like the song "All By Myself" I distanced myself from people. Now when I want to cross the bridges, no one is there on the other side. Thus the inspiration of my own "All By Myself," entitled "Not Easy." Verse 3 really sums it up...

My entourage of faces keeps me lost in the crowd
I’d rather be lonely than abandoned
but I yearn for someone to say, wanna come out and play?
I guess it all comes down to being loved

This really isn't meant for people to take pity on me or call with stuff to do. More so, I want to pose the honest question: Is it possible to want people too much? Is it possible to covet closeness? Can someone be a glutton for company?

One may be the loneliest number, but maybe One is just what I need.

Heroes always need sidekicks

As a songwriter, I tend to write songs for or about people in my life. Friendships have never been my forte, and looking back, I'm not sure why half of you have stuck with me for more than a year. Grace abounding, I suppose. I shyed away from friendships for about 3 years out of fear of betrayal, abandonment, and just the pain that will always accompany love. But I know now that I'd rather live with the pain of love than the security of apathy.

This song is dedicated to you, my friends, because I really do love you and appreciate every moment spent with you. I hope that I can convey this beyond lyrics on a facebook note, but please accept it as it is.


Save the World by Elise Dale

Don’t ask me to fly up and away
The gravity weighs me down
And I can’t see through the wall and masquerade
I’m half blinded myself

But I would save the world if I could
Yeah, I would save the world for you

I will not live forever
I already see the lines
And I cannot make the sun shine thru the clouds
Half the time the rain falls from my eyes

But I would save the world if I could
Yeah, I would save the world for you

Don't ask me how to fly
Heaven knows that I am blind
But I would save the world
Gravity weighs me down
And I can't erase these clouds
But I would save the world

Yeah, I would save the world if I could
I would save the world for you

Sick of Trash

To the reader: My hope for you is that you learn from your mistakes. That you understand that we ALL make them, and don't give into the self-destructive abuse of YOURSELF for making them, but that you seek to resolve what CAUSED you to make them in the first place. Learn from history. Don't assume that the ends justified the means, that survival equals celebration, and that laughing in the face of danger means the danger was a joke. And just because you might forget something doesn't mean it didn't happen, exist, or still remains.

I've felt sick all day. I can't really express this into words. So instead of wallowing in the present, I shall point to the solution. Others have said it better than me...

David said it this way
If David was Italian, he'd say it this way
Throw It All Away ~ Brandi Carlile
Give It Up ~ Amos Lee

I love you all, very very much.

Driven

I have a dictionary from home that I'm pretty sure I've used since elementary school. Today I was looking up the word "cosmopolitan" and found an insert of paper with definitions on it. Judging from the handwriting (and assuming I'm the author), I'm thinking it's from elementary school. The words being defined were "driven" and "driving". The following are the definitions I apparently highlighted:

Driven: to send, excell or otherwise cause to move by force or compulsion
Driving: 1. energetic; vigorously active, 2. relaxing or transmitting power [me]

Relaxing or transmitting power? What does that even mean? Is it some human form of potential energy? More importantly, why would an elementary student use this definition to define herself? Did I actually have that much insight to one of the core parts of my being?

My IU professor told me that I am one of the most anxious students he's had. This was after I asked him for a graduate school application 5 days into this fall semester. I told him that I'd prefer to be called "driven". I have absolutely no recollection of using this word when I was a kid, let alone associating it with myself. And then to find this in my dictionary...Now I don't believe in coincidences, but I do believe in signs. That things are put together in a greater design, working for something that I cannot see but at times will get glimpses of. My recent determination and borderline underground obsession with my pursuit of music encapsulates this word "driven". The possible idea that I wrote these definitions and left them in the dictionary, to find them a decade later, as maybe a note from my inner child: remember who you are, remember that there is a potential, relaxing, transmitting power at your core. And remember me, the imaginative girl who ran around the tree 6 times to never grow up, and rolled around on the couch singing "Who Can I Turn To?" hoping one day to sing forever...

...or maybe it was for a spelling test and I forgot to throw it away.