Alyssa DeGraff’s blog

Moving on...

nobody@vox.com(Alyssa DeGraff) — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 22:34:27 -0700

April 5th, 2008

It's only been a month, but I am switching servers. Realizing I have only 3 friends on Vox and the inability to add friends from other servers, I am migrating to Wordpress. I'm way too disorganized to keep track of where everyone's bloggage is at. It's not you , Vox, it's me...

Here's the new site:

www.missiealyssie.wordpress.com

I'll keep this one up and haven't yet decided if I'll move the previous blogs over. God bless and keep writing!

-Alyssa-

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Typos, wood chippers, regurgitation. Hooray for journals!

nobody@vox.com(Alyssa DeGraff) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 01:05:29 -0700

March 30, 2008

Post Seven24 Wind-down

So I have had an entertaining/intense/sometimes hysterical experience reading through all of my old journals lately. For one, I can barely read my own writing many times. My r's, k's and n's come in subtle variations of one symbol, which I seem to have invented. Good thing it's not on my keyboard. On top of that my typos are ridiculous! I skip words, replace words, combine words, I even invent words (like "prepiphany" which I guess happens before an epiphany). Luckily, I am used to laughing at myself, so the discovery of my 'unique' style was not a shocker. Sadly, many of my entries came at times of frustration and desperation so there aren't too many uppers, however there are some excerpts that I now see came purely from divine revelations. Here is one night's contemplations:

November 21, 2006
So first off, I'm promising myself that this will be a short entry.
1.) I have to wake up for church in 5 hours.
2.) This pen's about to poop out.
I think I've grown up having seen too many movies. One simple thing that they all have in common is an ending. Even the depressing, hopeless ones find some imaginative way to make a cute red bow and allow the viewer to feel some sort of closure. Life, on the other hand, has this way of going on and on (I know 'duh' - stick with me). Our life stories aren't formed around singular events that strive for depth and closure. It's like a wood chipper that just spews out more and more chips. Sometimes I feel as though I'm standing there under it, furiously shoveling the pile to prevent the shavings at the bottom from turning to mulch. Sometimes I feel like I end up buried in that mulch. I suddenly get overwhelmed with the philosophies of life, the general concept of the whole 'church thing', and the waxing and waning of my own personal faith in this loving God that knows more than I do. What does it mean to follow God? He doesn't really use his blinkers. It's kind of like trying to track a mysterious invisible bus sitting in rush hour traffic, and the job is to understand its shape/direction by seeing the things surrounding it. By seeing its impression on things visible. By questioning to understand what it is not.

Okay back to 2008 Alyssa. I love this passage below, from Colossians*, that encourages us to acknowledge the mystery of God. That is the kind of faith that allows questions about what God is or is not. Don't we have a tendency to think that our pastors/ mentors/parents have done all the chewing for us? I have to think, "Am I allowing myself to be spiritually malnourished** by relying on predigested God?" Wow I just got a great visual of those mother birds that feed their babies by regurgitating food. Now I have a disturbing image of Brian Kiley....okay nevermind. Anyways, what are you eating?

* "...their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgment of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ; In whom are hid all the treasure of wisdom and knowledge."
-Colossians 2:2-3
** "You have been Christians a long time now, and you ought to be teaching others. Instead, you need someone to teach you again the basic things a beginner must learn about the Scriptures. You are like babies who drink only milk and cannot eat solid food."

-Hebrews 5:12

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Ouch

nobody@vox.com(Alyssa DeGraff) — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 20:07:35 -0700

March 21st

Good Friday

So I am suddenly weirded out because my living room smells like gardenia. And gardenia is my favorite flower. And our bush out front only blooms in the middle of summer. But I tell you, the room reeks of gardenia (in a good way).

This week has been an out of body experience. Or I should say an out of mind experience, because my body has definitely been a part of every moment of the past four days. I got my tonsils removed on Tuesday. After plenty of doctors and friends alike warning me of the two hellish weeks of pain, I welcomed the challenge. No big deal. I have a 'high pain tolerancy', right? So in hindsight, I have to say the pain is bearable, only because it is forgettable to a point. I could sit on this couch (as I have for the majority of the week) and watch tv to my heart's content and have a proud confidence in my body's pain tolerancy until the moment I go to sip/eat/swallow anything. I kid you not. I have lost eight pounds and I am normally a big fan of food.

This afternoon I was suddenly energized, perhaps by a brief sunbath, perhaps the effect of too many syrupy liquids (I'm on a bit of a hummingbird diet), and decided to go to our church's Good Friday 'Experience'. With a stubborn confidence in my ability to be OK I marched out the door in a dress, purely delighted to not be in pajamas anymore. After about thirty minutes of this 'experience' my body alerted me that I was definitely not ready to be outside the house and so I quickly fled the scene in fear of passing out. I also felt weird turning down communion, as if I was hiding some sort of shameful conscience.

I guess tonight I am to have my own Good Friday experience. No prayer room. No juice and cracker. Just doing my best to be honest with God about where I'm at and what I'm capable of. A lot less self-confident.

On the drive home, I saw a middle-aged man walking his German Shepherd. They were along one of the prettier greenbelts in my neighborhood, and as my car approached them, there it was. The thing that all dog owners dread. His dog was 'using the facilities'. Number two, right there in front of me. On the beautiful grass, nonetheless. The man was instantly embarrassed and glanced at his dog with a sorry look of disownership. Now my mind has to be a little twisted on these pain meds, but I saw an image of God in that dog's situation. Try as we may to be followers of Christ, we create little stinky messes on a daily basis and our Father NEVER disowns us. He NEVER looks upon us with shame or regret. He calls us into adoption. He promises to clean us of our sins, our pasts, our lowest moments. He takes complete ownership over us and all that we have done.

I was reminded of an intense moment I had in the prayer room last week. I was sitting in the big chair, just sort of free-writing my thoughts to God and I was suddenly struck with the image of the cross in the center of the room. There, in that neat little well-lit prayer room stood a cross, maybe 6 feet tall. It was covered in pink and yellow Post-it notes. Pray-ers had been guided to write down sins they felt convicted of and to pin them to the cross. Now I don't want to sound cynical about our ways of communicating to God. I absolutely love that we have a prayer room where people can have the opportunity to come clean with their God. But suddenly it wasn't enough. Suddenly I had this vision of our 'Post-it note faith', where every sense of guilt is just a pencil away from gone, and all the sins we commit are neatly stuck to the cross in little pastel rows and columns. What if we were called to carve our sins into these planks of wood? What if it took longer than five minutes? What if we had to carve our names upon the back of our Saviour?

I shared my experience with my Mom the next day and she (like always) had some great wisdom from her experiences with Last Days Ministries. I guess one of the things Keith Green emphasized at his concerts was that revival would only come once people truly realized and owned the depth of their sins. He said that you had to want revival badly enough to be willing to completely die for it. No more convenient, fast-food, online shopping, Wal-mart faith. A faith that is messy and bloody and painful.

It has been a few hours now, and the room no longer smells like gardenias. I have to wonder how a God could love me enough to tuck fragrant little blessings into each of my days. Because without His grace...I am the dog.

"I will not sacrifice that which has cost me nothing." 1 Chronicles 21:24

"The real test of being in the presence of God is, that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object. It is better to forget about yourself altogether." C.S. Lewis

Mere Christianity

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Science or faith? Yep.

nobody@vox.com(Alyssa DeGraff) — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 23:29:25 -0700

March 14th 2008

New Song Prayer Room

Have you ever wondered if there are more colors than the ones our eyes can perceive? As a music theory student, I have been learning the overtone series which reminded me of my doubts about human perception. Basically, each individual note that we hear (known as the formant) has a vast number of other notes within it, most of which we are unable to hear (if you ask me about this, I have a cool demonstration I can do on a piano). Imagine what God hears when we make worshipful music for Him: all the complex layers of harmonies and voices hidden within every single chord. And then to learn that our system of tuning instruments, known as temperament, is completely man-made and unnatural (since true natural tuning doesn't allow for key changes). Our seemingly tuned pianos and guitars have all kinds of impurities when compared to true intervals. It shows me even more that I cannot rely on my human perception to fully understand the world around me (*Hosea 5:11). We have never heard a perfectly tuned symphony in its true fullness. Not on this side of heaven.

Recognizing this analytical mind God has given me, I have to wonder what on Earth he sees in my future. The more I learn about science the less I see a divide between it and faith. They feed on each other. My physiopsychology class has been studying Darwin and survival of the fittest. I found myself reminded of playing Oregon Trail as a child (and now on Facebook) and being completely sucked into the hunting of bison and brothers dying of dysentary (I bet my mom had a fun time explaining that one to me). Us humans have competition and survival deeply instilled in our beings. If it were not for the fall of Man in the Garden of Eden, we would not have to work to survive. There would be no such thing as 'not surviving'. No death, illness, struggle. God's complete provision. But the curse has made the soil hard and we must break up our own fallow ground, under our feet and in our hearts (**Hosea 10:12). Thanks Darwin.

My parents recently heard someone claim that it is scientifically shown that becoming a Christian changes your DNA. I must admit that I am extremely embarassed, as a Christian, to be associated with this. He suggested that people are seeking how to alter a person's DNA in order to 'convert' them. Wow, thank God that we have free will to deny others' free will, right? It did get me thinking about DNA though. It is so miraculous the way that we form out of our parents' love for each other and their individual genetic characteristics. Then we have this idea of God as the original Father, having imparted a piece of Himself unto life on earth. Having created us out of love and the desire to have an entity outside Himself, though not unlike Himself. What a parallel.

Last week I was thinking about how one of the most known characteristics of God is that he is unchanging. And we, created in His image, are constantly changing. How can change be essential to humanity, yet 'outside' of God? Donald Miller's book, Through Painted Deserts has an amazing chapter about the God/light metaphor in Hebrew culture that brought me a good deal of resolve about my question.

Light [is] a nonsubstance that is like a particle and like a wave, but perhaps neither, just some kind of traveling energy. Light then becomes a fitting metaphor for a nonbeing who is. God, if like light, travels at the speed of light, and because space and time are mingled with speed, the speed of light is the magic, exact number that allows a kind of escape from time.

He continues to talk about the exponentially increasing density of molecules as they travel faster and how our molecular structure prevents us from moving at the speed of light. Prevents us from moving outside of time. So back to the question of change. Being non-molecular, God is not bound in time. Our molecular bondage to time is what causes the byproduct of change. I guess I was most blown away by the non-coincidence that the timing of my reading matched up perfectly with my spiritual questioning. Thank you Father for creating light in our universe to point us back to your mysterious enormity.

*" Ephraim (part of Israel) is oppressed and broken in judgment, because he willingly walked by human precept."

-Hosea 5:11

** "Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground. for it is time to seek the Lord, till He comes and rains righteousness on you."

-Hosea 10:12

Through Painted Deserts: Light, God, and Beauty on the Open Road

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First things first.

nobody@vox.com(Alyssa DeGraff) — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 21:55:44 -0700

Hello. This is my first blog ever. It happened inevitably out of me dedicating today to 'computer time', which has been everything from weeding out music from my iTunes to uploading photos. 5 hours later, here I am with an inspiration to write.

I do not have a mission statement, and I cannot guarantee any consistency. In fact I can guarantee inconsistency. My only hope is that through these ponderings I can further know and be known, a desire I have discovered is central to being human and being in search of the wonders of existence.

One of my favorite books is Blue Like Jazz, by Donald Miller, and I love that it isn't linear. He jumps from one time period to another (much like Lost, but don't get me started), emphasizing not when or how things are happening, but what is going on in his heart and mind. This blog just may end up being a digital sampler plate of my numerous journal entries that have brought me joy, tears, and amazement. Bon appetite :)

Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality

(If you haven't read this book, do it now! It is the first thing I read that was not assigned and that made me want to read.)

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