I can tell you mine, I can tell you mine, I can tell you lies

What is our capacity to be changed? And what seeps into the cracks of our synapses to facilitate that change? What is the Trojan Horse of our heart? I know for me it is music. I can hear something over and over again; I can be trying to memorize something or wrestling through an idea. Put it to music and that's all it takes.

Matt and I watched a movie the other night, on the recommendation of the Schantzs, called The Kingdom. Scott was talking about the very last scene in that film where the four FBI agents are talking about their project in Saudi Arabia. One of their comrades was killed and Jamie Foxx says, "I told her don't worry. We're going to kill them all." It was a very striking scene in the film put to a kick ass song by Explosions in the Sky. It calls to mind something very profound about justice. Justice is something very amorphous though. It can be seen as vengeful or motivated out of anger and how do we as believers encounter that. How do I reconcile the fact that if someone harmed my husband, I would hunt them down and beat them to death. How do we change our path, a path that is shaped by our history. How do we exonerate those motivated out of hate towards us, while still being authentic. I don't believe that God would ever condone blood thirst but the God I believe in, you don't have to read much through the Old Testament to see a God of consequence. How do you forgive? How do you live in a world where so many people are motivated our of hate, where it is instilled in them from so early in their journey.

Norm threw it down this morning. We're moving through Acts right now (which I am mega pumped about. I LOVE Acts) but this series is going to take us 22 months. Which is a long time. January of 2012 we'll be thinking about something new. Early in Acts, the Holy Spirit is talked about a lot. The Holy Spirit has always been this entity to me that I didn't have anything to associate it with. I knew God. I knew Christ. I knew the Holy Spirit was kick ass and I knew it was important, I just didn't know why. I'm finding it now. The more I dive into the Word, the more I own it. I've always felt it but I feel like it's mine now. We have the BEST community around us right now. Scott and Jo are SO great. But on Sunday, Norm was talking about the Holy Spirit and what it means to be changed by it. You have Salvation by being changed by the Holy Spirit, by it dwelling in you. The 'Spirit gives you utterance', it gives you a new language to speak in, a new mission. Norm asked, "Why would the Holy Spirit dwell in you and make that change if you don't want to be part of the change." It's a valid question but at the same time there are numerous examples of Christ being part of our lives when we don't deserve. Sarah had something on her fb the other day about "Mercy is something we get that we unfortunately deserve. Grace is something we do not deserve." Christ entered into this whole bowl of shit for us. With us in mind. Knowing that and choosing that (actively wanting it) is where the change happens.

~P.S: Oh yeah and today I almost dropped my wedding band down the drain. Not good.

Ya Dvadstat-oden ~ I'm Twenty-one

School is real now I tell ya. I kind of feel like I have been staring at a pretty picture and the Olympics have come and gone. I feel like I'm MISSING things.

We have, so far, successfully traversed the couple friends terrain so far. We have Scott and Jo who are beautiful, authentic, REAL people that have been an unreal blessing to u

s in the past year but we have slowly (on my part, very slowly) integrated ourselves into the community at Regent and Westside and the Lord has brought about such great people. We had our first small group last Thursday which was so fun! It may at some points p

ut a bit of strain on studying and getting homework done but it is absolutely worth it. Westside has this surprising demographic despite being Calvinist and Mennonite, of about 18-35 year olds that make up most of their church. And so most of the people that we're connecting with are of similar life circumstances and times of life and all invested in very different things. I am so excited for small group. There is this one fabulously positive girl in our small group. She, very misguidedly, asked me to cut her hair. I have not acquiesced as of yet. I am reminding her repeatedly (and FOR HER OWN GOOD) that it would be a very bad thing for me to cut her hair. And then we have one girl from Germany. A dancer. A ref

ormed hippie. It's a good mix. It's not really a 'small' group, more of a 'midsize' group with twenty-one people. And they have great snacks. Matt and I are always late though. Hmm.

Last night we went for dinner at the house of one of the pastors at Westside. Their little boy, 18 mts old, is holy smokes the cutest little person I have ever seen. Chad was telling us how they have programmed OCD into him already. Once last night, when their little boy walked up to a plate of crackers and grabbed a handful (which turned out to be 2), Dad says, "Kiel you took two, can you put the other one back?". Kiel looks at Dad, selects his cracker of choice and dextrously places the second cracker back into the exact same place. He pushes his chair in once he's done with it. He goes to get paper towel when he's spilled something on the floor. He's 18 months old.

My man was in fine form last night. I'm not the only one who could pick his brain for hours. There was a rather chirpy debate going on reg

arding women in leadership which is something Westside (being crazy, I think. I think that's the term) doesn't support in their church. It was something that broke my heart a little when I found out about it. The Lord had blown my heart wide open and hadn't let me go when we first went to Westside. Afterwards, after we had moved to Van, I found out about certain stances they have. They are very complimentarian,

which I do not, on many levels, agree with. I am only now, however, beginning to encounter it from a scriptural basis. I prayed a lot about it to wrestle through can I stand for a community that stands for things that I don't? I felt like the Lord said to me, "I am not asking you to confront that right now. I am asking you to trust and believe in what I want to do in you through this place." So after about fifteen minutes of the party line being towed, they quiet down a

nd all kind of look warily over at Matt. He has established a reputation of being the debating type. And then he pretty much takes a deep breath and throws it down. He called it the last form of acceptable discrimination in the church. I kind of felt like I should have had a weave in my hair and fluorescent hi tops with the laces undone, barking at some throwdown behind my man dressed like a white 'Fitty'. But he was AWESOME. (Totally feelin' the caps lock today.)

I love fall. I have said this, no? I recently came upon a freakin' gold mine of fallishness. I have tried to incorporate what I consider fall clothes for the past two weeks and every time I have sweated myself into submission. It is not fall yet. Not even officially. I wear flip flops everyday or else I can't get myself under control. It's really so too bad. But it will get here eventually. November will arrive and everyone will be in such a bad mood that we'll have to bring out the thick socks and wonderful toques.

Hyperbole and a Half has recently reintroduced me to laughing so hard I herniate something.

This girl is like my age too and her stick drawings are AWESOME (Again? Totally). She has a post on Social Terrorism that is soooooooooo true. The Four Levels of Social Entrapment. The one I saw first was why I'll never be an adult which contained the 'go the the bank like a motherf***king adult' thing. But it gets so much better. I think she probably draws all of her stuff on Paint but she's got such freakin' skills I can't contain myself. Blogs and humidity WILL be my demise.

"I have to be careful...you're a bubble in my hand."

Last night was the first meeting of the Regent Spouses' Network which is precisely that: women at the end of their ropes because their husbands are working on their Masters. I kid but it was very cool to get around other women who are at such unique parts in their lives. One is in her mid forties with grown children. One was mega-pregnant. One had four boys. There were a couple of us newbies first years who all shared a similar sentiment that we were "so very very not ready for babies and if God is ready for that for us he has some preparatory work to do". Some are American, some were from South Africa.

Sitting around in a circle, sipping coffee and mowing on these bars that were miraculous wadges of chocolate and shortbread and this gooey, melty-mouth centre filling that somehow made me understand why it must be so hard to wean yourself off crack. I could introduce myself to so many girls my age who are married and have husband's studying and that is one thing that I have struggled to find since I got married. I find that Christian circles are like breeding pools for women like that but they can sometimes be...well lets be honest, they can be kind of weird. These ones though ('these ones' makes it sound like they're playing cards), were so sweet. Great senses of humour and really eager to get involved with each other. Conversation did stray at the end, guided by an adorable girl from Cape Town, to the bunk driving in Vancouver. Not only is it a steering wheel on the other side but it's driving on the other side of the road. She and some of the other International girls agreed that it was a hard transition. I made sure they knew that I've been driving on the right side of the road since I started to drive and Vancouver still makes me apoplectic. We shared cheap grocery stores and tips on cool places to go and great places to shop. I'm not local but I live in an easy part of the city to live in. A couple of the girls live very south so it's a train and two buses to get anywhere. Oy. The Americans were very excited about the free health care. I didn't want to ruin by telling them to look at their health care payments on their next paycheck. It only looks free.

We played a nice, simple, Christian-y game of get to know you questions involving Smarties. It made me realize that there are overwhelmingly inane questions associated with getting to know someone. Some of the questions were fine like 'where's your favourite place you've visited' which people are fairly content to answer and 'favourite food' which got a unanimously positive feedback but then questions like "what's your husband studying' and 'what's your favourite thing about being married' that are to the one totally whatever questions and for the second, a question that I don't mind answering but it's just such a vapid question. Whether you're in your first year of marriage or your twentieth year of marriage, the answer to something like that can't be encompassed in seconds or in any situation where it's followed by "Can I eat my Smarties yet?". You want to know someone and trust someone before you can really get into the meat of that question. I also don't think that some people ever think about that. It's something in their hearts that they own but they've never put it into words for someone else before. And sometimes there is no reason to. There are fun, conversational questions that you can ask when you're meeting new people and trying to get a conversation moving. Like something about a hidden talent or favourite joke. Everyone wants to tell something about eating with chopsticks using their feet or their favourite 'why did the chicken cross the road'.

I've been so blessed to see and understand God's presence in our marriage this past week. Coming back to Vancouver this summer after our holidays, I felt apprehensive about the social aspect of our lives. I've learned a lot about myself in the past couple years just about how I operate as a social animal. Namely, I'm not an animal about it. I am timid when it comes to introducing myself and I am shy about sharing things about myself. If I am with someone I know, it is slightly easier but alone I have to consciously prep myself not to be self-loathing and nervous. Moving to a new place always brings to focus this struggle and I have to be careful not to extrapolate that and read it into my self-worth.

In praying a lot about it, I found that the Lord has been bringing me opportunities to push myself in that respect. Westside has been such a wellspring of nurturing community and then being at school I have the opportunity to interact with people that will profoundly shape and challenge me in these coming years.

Scott and Jo got a dog which is so adorable and wonderful. He's a poodle but like a dude poodle not one of the froofy gay poodles. He's all shaggy and his name is Hendrix. We went over the night they got him to see him and he had been so excited earlier that he had thrown up.

~ This is a super cool song.

~ And so it this. This song always makes me think of painting last summer. Such a crappy job but the actual painting was pretty. I was caught by the owners of the house shaking my booty to this up on their roof a couple of times.

~ And this is a massively wonderful song. She totally blisses out at the end but whenever we sing this at church I sob through the whole thing.

Do Svidanya!

P.S ~ Russian is still totally awesome and it will be totally awesome until I have to actually do something with all of those letters. I will let you know how much I cry when I have to conjugate a verb.

One thing I appreciated about a small University was there was always a place to sit

Day one of Brianne vs. hugeness population.

"I not only want to sit. I want an entire table to myself."

UVic improperly prepared me for this. So did Mount Royal. Maybe since this is round three and I am experiencing a rude awakening, the common denominator is me...

Altogether a good time though.

I have dunked my head in the boiling, thick water that is the Russian language and have found it's not too bad. I have a good handle on the most useful facets of learning a new language like, "Hello", "goodbye", and "No, I'm sorry I'm from Canada". My teacher said we shouldn't bother learning "excuse me" because they never say that in Russia anyway.

One of my creative writing courses this semester is Writing for Stage and Radio. Whenever I think of a radio play, I think of those hilarious ones from the forties (this is first hand experience obviously) where they would do murder mysteries and dramas and there would be hysterical crying, gunshots and shrieking orchestral strings. I don't know, kind of like this. Then I thought of Stuart McLean. He is the KING of radio monologues. But that's the thing. Stuart McLean is awesome as Stuart McLean. People send him in stories and then he Stuart McLeans it and suddenly the most inane story of a man getting a flat tire on the side of the road makes me stop in the middle of the sidewalk and squish my cheeks together in a fishy face because they are sore from laughing so hard. The man has a gift. But we don't want Stuart McLean to be merely the voice, no one wants the pressure of writing for Stuart McLean and then listeners sitting in their cars/living rooms/back rooms wondering "whoa what happened to Stuart McLean?", we want him to be Stuart McLean. So in the small and admittedly monopolized world of radio drama has yet to really be tapped into. But when it has, UBC has a class for that. And has for a while.

I'm part of the Regent Spouses Network (there is no joiner-ish activity possible that I'm not signed up for this year). The kick-off is tonight. Everyone has to be baited with coffee and doughnuts in order to do anything but signed up on FB and all. Time to make friends! Everyday of classes last week I was on the Regent campus (even though I don't even go there) which I think was slightly misleading for people who actually go there because they associate me with people they for some reason need to know and remember the name of. Which is so very sweet. But I'm not trying to remember their names. I bought a bible at their bookstore and then returned it and then bought another one and then bought cards and then saw my husband and then stood around looking awkward and therefore...I am someone to know.

We had a wine and cheese party at our place on Saturday which was...amazeballs. Super fun. Everybody brought and wine and a cheese that would go well with it. We had chocolate and grapes and all of this stuff that people say goes well with wine when really it takes good with wine because it tastes good period. And then we played this game called "Things" which is kind of like Balderdash and was likewise very funny. And then we played Cranium which is an outrageous game. Do you know the names of two Governor-Generals from before Confederation? Well we needed to know that. Seems...obscure. But it was so fun. Scott and Jo are mega game people. And then Jesse, Jo's brother, is a mega games person and then we had some 'undecideds' and 'strongly agrees' so it made for a great game. Most of them were from church and are such great people. And then Matt had a friend from Prairie who now goes to Regent as well that is hysterical. You know the fishy-face thing? Anytime around BJ is like that. She should meet Stuart McLean. So they stopped by. And great cheese and wine and assorted hilarity ensued.

It has been so great being home and being in our community. Small group starts up this week. There were so many great ones and we prayed a lot through two in particular and we felt the Lord was leading us to support Scott and Jo in theirs which is going to be so great. We have kick ass conversation even when we're not in a small group setting so I think when everyone comes really focussed for Jesus time it'll be so good.

We're hitting the rainy season here. But I have so many wonderful scarves and boots and sweaters and fall is my favourite time of year so needless to say I am, yes, very excited about this too. The 12 Project that I'm doing with Lacey is so much fun and our theme for September is take a picture in your favorite coffee shop. I'm really invested in a piece that I'm working on right now that's not a school project but it's a story I came up with during the summer. I take one night a week and I get out of the house and write. I get myself some tea and chill out in a good spot (preferably by the plug in) and then just sink into it. If I can make a habit for myself I can actually begin to see growth and change in my writing. That will make it so that when I am writing for school and for a deadline that I don't feel like I'm drawing up squeaky wheels.

Baka!

-Bye (In Russian!)

Sweet disposition

Oh introversion, how you never cease to surprise me.

So today, despite all of my ambivalence and general weenieness about what the formidable "orientation" could hold for me, today was actually hilariously fun. Fun is maybe an...amplification of terms but I met some really fun people and they made the day truly enjoyable.

There were some hiccups. Like all of the creative writing programming I signed up for not being available to me because it's only for third-year creative writing students. But at least I wasn't the only person to do that. All of the other transfer students ran into the same thing. And the creative writing department was no help. Which...again?! And then there was a pep rally and a bouncy castle -which why do we wonder some this generation have an unextinguished reputation for living with their parents past 30? The Vice President of the university gave a speech that sounded like a Dr. Seuss poem. Everyone in the Faculty of Arts forgot the cheer and thus rebounded with the beer-bong standby of screaming your head off. It was a very post-secondary day. And I totally remembered all of the assorted accoutrements I plague myself with. I am the only adult who not only admits to but swears by the lifesaver that is the idiot string. Where would I be without that thing?

And then (which is really a beforehand kind of situation), on Sunday Matt and I were massively social and totally made friends with church people all on our own. The unrivaled Scott and Jo were out of town so when it came to making conversation we did not have our gregarious, super-talker buffer that we normally have. But we ended up spending the entire day with a group of about twenty-five people. We played disc golf, ate burritos and engaged in playfully teasing all of the single Christian people because really who doesn't like to be on either side of those conversations? I am still sore from the frisbee golf. I have the distance of a junior high shotput player and, judging from my general upper body, extremely poor form. But one thing that Westside has in spades is great community. There are remarkably wonderful human beings that go to that church.

We're plugging into a small group this fall which we are both very pumped for. Scott and Jo, being the 'people about town' that they are were picked to lead a small group this fall. And it's up at JJBean which has smotheringly good coffee. It's not super close to us. Probably a half hour by bus. There are some other small groups right in Kitsilano, like we can see it from our house. So we're thinking and praying through which one we're going to settle on. I'm so excited for the things that the Lord is bringing into our lives right now. There has been this marked shift since we moved to Vancouver. I love Victoria, even still, but there is something about Vancouver that I think the Lord was preparing us for on the Island. Now we're here and it seems like so much is coming our way and falling into place.

Wheee for links!

~ This is fascinating to me. I'm not sure how Matt would be willing to eat it but we tried out the crust recipe and it is awesome. My only suggestion would be if you are going to put sauce on in addition to toppings, put the bare crust in and toast it for a bit 10 minutes and then onto pizza as per routine :)

~ I am obsessed with doilies. But not the crusty ones from estate sales and Sally Anne. I want to crochet some sweet ones and do something like this with them.

~ Holy...amazeballs. This is immaculate. And probably not cheap especially with mangoes out of season. This makes us sad. Matt and I always keep assorted nuts in the house to add great texture and convention pine nuts were $8/100g! Why the -why?

~ Awesome cuz it just is.

~ I love the idea of having a low bed. Arie had one for a long time that she could tip her nose to the edge of her mattress and smell the carpet. It's probably fun for me because I've never suffered a pull-out couch or slept on an air mattress ad infinitum. Fun for me!

~ This is so freakin' Oh my gosh. So cute.

Happy Tuesday!

OMG Baby paraphernalia

In the spirit of positive thinking, when I look at my propensity towards ...procrastination, I think of it as a largely negative (albeit unavoidable) piece to my personality. But there's always a pony in there somewhere*.

Our lovely friend Emily in Victoria is having a baby! She told us right before we moved. And way back then, in late May, I told her that I wanted to crochet her little baby things. And I meant it. There is mega cuteness out there when it comes to baby handicrafts ('for' not 'by'). There are also mega cheesy ones. Anyway. I feel somewhat vindicated in my procrastination because way back in June there is no way I could have made anything I think is so babytastic as this:

This is a mishmash, stashbuster of adorableness. And the pompom is of considerable size.

Emily didn't know at the time of our leaving if it was a boy or a girl so both I tried my best to be gender neutral. This brings to play people's ideas of gender performance, concepts of socialized femininity and masculinity, and appropriate baby shower gifts. I chose instead to consult my yarn stash and breed inspiration from there. When we were in Calgary last month, I took to Value Village with Pam, who has the gods of secondhand awesomeness on her side and found a score of perfect little yarn balls (don't be rude!) packaged in a huge bag (don't be rude!) for my consumption.

These baby booties are the sweetest. And the easiest. I can finish a pair in fifteen minutes (and that's while being distracted by the TV). So easy. And just because I was dressed in lace, pink satin and iridescent beading as an infant doesn't mean that all little girls will. Do baby booties have to be a showpiece. They are the cutest thing on the planet just by virtue of being small. Like seriously! Or THIS. Little Peanut Snuggle Sack. The marketing around baby is so nauseatingly effective.

The pompom was hilarious fun. I think I may actually take up pom bomb. I (not surprisingly) caused harm to myself while making that pompom which is kind of like hurting yourself shopping for down comforters. I have an extremely complex love hate relationship with band-aids.

School starts tomorrow which requires a big breath. I'm all signed up for the orientation potpourri and that's really the only thing making me nervous. I'm...NOT an orientation person. Froshing, team building, all that garbage is so far from anything I find entertaining or conducive towards meeting people/making friends. I never come away from those things recognizing people and a meaningful connection. It's always 'you're the heavy girl that couldn't get over the Storm wall' or 'you're the dude that threw up hot dogs all the way from the stage back to his seat'. Awesome. Orientation has always been a day of awkward eye contact and droning messages from Student Union presidents and Deans about 'Your best year ever!'

But I'm all signed up. Because I'm a transfer student, I'm in the orientation programming with all of the other transfer students in the Bachelor of Arts department. So I'm not going to be stuck making conversation in line with a I get to meet my profs, other students from the same department and make connections for work co-op. And I will force myself to like it if I have to.

Official classes start Wednesday. Matt and I have been feebly attempting to try and get ourselves onto some kind of schedule resembling that of people doing things with their lives. We had a whole month of waking up whenever we wanted to. Like going to bed at 2am and wondering why when 8am boot camps me I end up sleeping until 1130. But making yourself get up for a hypothetical schedule as opposed to getting up for the class you went in debt for is a totally different story. I'm PUMPED for my classes. Getting back in a place where I'm writing for a challenge is always a great place. Sometimes I don't write well IN that place but I always write well AFTER that place.

And I'm taking Russian which is sweeeet. It's gonna be fur hats and lots of vodka from this point out.

Happy September!

*This is in reference to a finding the silver lining story of Mama D's. Two sisters: one's a pessimist and the other is an incessantly positive thinker. Like girls do, they always would ask for a pony for Christmas. So one Christmas, in an effort to bring out some positive thinking in the negative one, the parents said they had a surprise, there was a pony outside. The girls rush outside to see a huge pile of poop on the driveway. The negative sister stands on the side, uncomfortably eyeing the pile saying, "Where's the pony?" The other sister jumps into it and begins to dig around screaming, "There must be a pony in here somewhere!"