During exams I lamented over much of the junk around my house. I admit, I keep a fair amount of junk, yet I ironically value cleanliness and functionality. So as I begin my New Year's cleaning, I'd like to share some of my finds/ideas for greening junk that is around the house.
1) Salvation Army/Rescue Mission Donations
Start a bin of nice stuff that you don't want to throw away. I started my bin last year and I was angry at myself for not emptying it sooner, but I found that dropping off all of my random, lightly used clothes and other stuff were much needed and appreciated in the month of December when people need cheap, nice stuff to give others. I hate to say it, but I guess I'll blame it on my staffworker Rachel, if you don't like some of the gifts you get, take it back!!! Or if that is too much of a hassle for you like it is for me at times, just put it in the box for someone else's Christmas next year. This shouldn't matter, but you do get a nice tax-deductible for your donation. So there is no excuse NOT to get involved.
2) Recycle your denim!!
For just the shipping fee, you can get rid of all of those jeans that have holes in them that you think you'll wear, but you wouldn't dream of giving them to someone else. Keep in mind that the homeless really do need jeans, especially men's jeans, so I prefer to send my whole-ly ones. I found a place that recycles jeans and turns them into insulation for homes!!!
Fair Indigo Denim Drive
c/o Green Jeans Insulation Inc.
1109 W. Milwaukee Street
Stroughton, WI 53589
3) Broken Technology
So if you can't send your computer stuff to a donation center (like Habitat for Humanity) because it is broken, take it so a Staples store. There is a small fee (like $10). It is definately cheaper than Municipal Solid Waste Management fees and it isn't put in a landfill.
4) Books
I LOVE books, and I will NOT purge unless it is for a good cause. And purging as you all know is actually a good thing. Invisible Children, one of my favorite charities, has a book drive campaign that ends January 31, 2009. Send a book to one of the drive locations and the resell value of the books go to funding the re-establishment of schools in war-torn Uganda. When the campaign is over, you can steal send your books to the company that does the resell for other goods causes: Better World Books. I'll be honest, I've never seen books be a hit in thrift stores or in the places where books or donated (even when I worked in a non-profit U.S. school), so this operation is brilliant. If you are a book-a-holic, you can resell your own books to local bookshops and get store credit for new ones. Then give away your usual budget allotment surplus to a charity of your choice.
5) T-shirts
Do you have a t-shirt that you'd be embarressed to send to a thrift store? Cut the shirt along the seams until you have a front and a back. Cut each a few inches below the arm pits and wah-lah you have 4 cleaning cloths from one t-shirt! Forget having to use paper towels and nasty sponges for cleaning sinks, dusting furniture and windexing windows. I keep an old grocery bag in the laundry room and I wash all of the cloths when the bag fills up.
As I continue with my cleaning and organization efforts, I'll continue to post. If you have good ideas, please comment!!
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Who does God love?
The Poor, the poor, the poor! God loves the poor!! That is good news!! And as much as it is good news, sometimes it feels like old news. Granted, much of that is based on your physical and social location, and I'll explain a little why. Right now, I live in Durham, NC, a move I made from Asheville, a place I dearly loved and would have happily lived out my life until I was ready to be buried, but I made the move in response to God's call to be a reconciliation person. (Disclaimer: Sometimes answering that call is to stay EXACTLY where you are--just go pray about it if you're confused). I came here to learn how to love the poor and disempowered in better and more meaningful ways. In my Methodist upbringing, I heard that message a lot from the pulpit, saw it in action from hippies and the like in Asheville (Christian or not and most often not through the Church), and then in both Mainline and Evangelical churches I saw mostly rich people in church claiming God's grace. And it is weird, lately my time in Durham I've seen a lot of people who claim to love the poor (and they do), but yet have deep contempt for the rich (yet of course, that's not them--they aren't rich, they are poor and at most "middle class" or in debt--but never do they lump themselves in with the rich).
So who does Jesus love? Does he love the poor or the rich people on the pews? Over the past few years I've come to realize that He equally loves both, yet he shows more active concern over the poor more or less as an equalizer and also as a realist, knowing full well that money can distract people who have already hardened their hearts and chosen their own god.
Much of my story growing up in L-town gives me this hybrid identity: a born-and-bred white person going to a predominately multicultural school where I was the one who had to learn the art of acculturation to a certain extent; an AIG/AP kid and considered a "prep" without ever truly feeling that I belonged to the incrowd; yet when I explain where I went to school I was told that I was from "the disadvantaged parts" yet I would simultaneously rub shoulders with prominant North Carolinians and attend all the social functions of the Old South.
As the children's book I have on Barack Obama says: In a world of separation, "being both, [you can] not take sides." For a good chunk of my life, I tried to pick sides. Am I going to be the outcast or the socialite? I spent a number of years trying to be totally one or the other. It was torturous living in a world where I didn't totally fit into either category. I wouldn't say that either one is better than the other, but I can say that I'm learning that God can use and redeem both parts of me. And when I'm operating from the place of not choosing sides and letting God both use me and transform me (and of course repeat the process again), then I feel that I can obey both the parable of the talents and the parable about giving up all for the Gospel.
To me, this is part of what reconciliation means. It isn't about an outside force arbitrarily trying to give justice when they can't do it (because they represent a certain "side"), but it is about Jesus. Jesus was the epitome of what it means to experience both sides, "fully God and fully man." Jesus is able to re-establish relationship because He can't take sides, but he can arbitrate justly from both.
Yes, I've been in those churches that says God wants to make you wealthy and prosperous (and not so much in the Joel Osteen way, but just really emphasize that Scripture is talking about spiritual conditions and not physical) and I've also been to the ones who encourage you to give all to the poor. I find that in both extremes, people lose parts of the Gospel--Jesus LOVES lost, messed up, screwy, hypocritical and screwed over people. He doesn't pick sides. He does some radical things. Extremely radical things for the poor, disempowered, ethnic and gender issues, etc. But he also didn't turn away Nicodememus the Pharisee or the Rich young ruler. He lauded the man who had many talents and multiplied them and punished the man who had little and didn't squander it but rather saved it--a 100% return investment.
I'm not saying that I know how God works, because as much as I love Him and as much as I come to know how amazing God is, the more I have to admit that I don't understand. We must be careful in how we love and attempt to love people--and who we say that Jesus loves. For if you are like me, saying that God hates the rich means hating people like me. Seriously, are you going to hate on Bono for using his celebrity to draw attention to Africa and AIDS? Are you going to hate on his Product Red campaign which uses capitalisim and consumerism to save lives? Are you going to hate the three American cowboys who on a whim went to Uganda and started the Invisible Children project, using their privilege to truly change things on the ground--even helping to stop a war that lasted for decades?
Reconciliation (to me) is about what God has first done for us in Christ. Where God reaches down to us who have wronged him and yet also have nothing to repay their debt, and all of it is taken care of (painfully so) through Christ's incarnation, death and resurrection. That Christ did not see equality with God something to be held on to or merely thrown away, but to bring restoration. For us to mimic this is not only to recieve this grace, but for us to equally love those Christ died for (which Romans says for is the ungodly)...and uh, yeah, last time I checked that would be all of us.
**Disclaimer: This does not mean go and make lots of money. It means that money can actually translate into change. I believe God calls us to use our material blessings well. I used to think all people who aspired to be doctors and lawyers were scum of the earth who couldn't really love God; and then I learned about how God's calling is purposeful, and it is simply our human designation of salaries that causes discrepencies in professional wealth (ie. think teachers). Yet that doesn't mean that someone couldn't equally serve God all day in their work environment and then give a large portion of that away through tithing. Even when I lived on a teacher's salary, I found that I had (as a single person) waaaaayyy more than I needed to live on and could lavishly give when anyone had a need. I could have chosen to buy a new car instead, or upgrade other parts of my material life, but through growing me in contentment, God helped me to give and to give cheerfully. I then taught at a non-profit boarding school where all of my living expenses were met on a very very low salary (below minimum wage), yet I did just fine. I didn't have as much freedom to give, but I experienced life on the recieving end and I never had a need.
So who does Jesus love? Does he love the poor or the rich people on the pews? Over the past few years I've come to realize that He equally loves both, yet he shows more active concern over the poor more or less as an equalizer and also as a realist, knowing full well that money can distract people who have already hardened their hearts and chosen their own god.
Much of my story growing up in L-town gives me this hybrid identity: a born-and-bred white person going to a predominately multicultural school where I was the one who had to learn the art of acculturation to a certain extent; an AIG/AP kid and considered a "prep" without ever truly feeling that I belonged to the incrowd; yet when I explain where I went to school I was told that I was from "the disadvantaged parts" yet I would simultaneously rub shoulders with prominant North Carolinians and attend all the social functions of the Old South.
As the children's book I have on Barack Obama says: In a world of separation, "being both, [you can] not take sides." For a good chunk of my life, I tried to pick sides. Am I going to be the outcast or the socialite? I spent a number of years trying to be totally one or the other. It was torturous living in a world where I didn't totally fit into either category. I wouldn't say that either one is better than the other, but I can say that I'm learning that God can use and redeem both parts of me. And when I'm operating from the place of not choosing sides and letting God both use me and transform me (and of course repeat the process again), then I feel that I can obey both the parable of the talents and the parable about giving up all for the Gospel.
To me, this is part of what reconciliation means. It isn't about an outside force arbitrarily trying to give justice when they can't do it (because they represent a certain "side"), but it is about Jesus. Jesus was the epitome of what it means to experience both sides, "fully God and fully man." Jesus is able to re-establish relationship because He can't take sides, but he can arbitrate justly from both.
Yes, I've been in those churches that says God wants to make you wealthy and prosperous (and not so much in the Joel Osteen way, but just really emphasize that Scripture is talking about spiritual conditions and not physical) and I've also been to the ones who encourage you to give all to the poor. I find that in both extremes, people lose parts of the Gospel--Jesus LOVES lost, messed up, screwy, hypocritical and screwed over people. He doesn't pick sides. He does some radical things. Extremely radical things for the poor, disempowered, ethnic and gender issues, etc. But he also didn't turn away Nicodememus the Pharisee or the Rich young ruler. He lauded the man who had many talents and multiplied them and punished the man who had little and didn't squander it but rather saved it--a 100% return investment.
I'm not saying that I know how God works, because as much as I love Him and as much as I come to know how amazing God is, the more I have to admit that I don't understand. We must be careful in how we love and attempt to love people--and who we say that Jesus loves. For if you are like me, saying that God hates the rich means hating people like me. Seriously, are you going to hate on Bono for using his celebrity to draw attention to Africa and AIDS? Are you going to hate on his Product Red campaign which uses capitalisim and consumerism to save lives? Are you going to hate the three American cowboys who on a whim went to Uganda and started the Invisible Children project, using their privilege to truly change things on the ground--even helping to stop a war that lasted for decades?
Reconciliation (to me) is about what God has first done for us in Christ. Where God reaches down to us who have wronged him and yet also have nothing to repay their debt, and all of it is taken care of (painfully so) through Christ's incarnation, death and resurrection. That Christ did not see equality with God something to be held on to or merely thrown away, but to bring restoration. For us to mimic this is not only to recieve this grace, but for us to equally love those Christ died for (which Romans says for is the ungodly)...and uh, yeah, last time I checked that would be all of us.
**Disclaimer: This does not mean go and make lots of money. It means that money can actually translate into change. I believe God calls us to use our material blessings well. I used to think all people who aspired to be doctors and lawyers were scum of the earth who couldn't really love God; and then I learned about how God's calling is purposeful, and it is simply our human designation of salaries that causes discrepencies in professional wealth (ie. think teachers). Yet that doesn't mean that someone couldn't equally serve God all day in their work environment and then give a large portion of that away through tithing. Even when I lived on a teacher's salary, I found that I had (as a single person) waaaaayyy more than I needed to live on and could lavishly give when anyone had a need. I could have chosen to buy a new car instead, or upgrade other parts of my material life, but through growing me in contentment, God helped me to give and to give cheerfully. I then taught at a non-profit boarding school where all of my living expenses were met on a very very low salary (below minimum wage), yet I did just fine. I didn't have as much freedom to give, but I experienced life on the recieving end and I never had a need.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Lord of the Flies
So yes, it is Christmas Eve and I'm posting on Lord of the Flies--how unappropriate you may say (and so I thought too). I finished this classic late last night, not being able to stop reading. I'm unsure whether I kept going because it was suspenseful or whether I really wanted to be done with all of the gory details.
I used to like disgusting murder books like the Fear Street series when I was younger, but I wanted to chuck this book across the room many times, furious that it is read by 9th graders everywhere. We live in a culture that is much too violent. Having been a teacher for a year (it feels like a LOT longer though) and having spent a lot of time with children and wanting to continue to do so, I find myself making a lot of choices about my parenting style and reflecting on the style of my parents. Although they could be true duds at times, I look back and want to say "thank you" for the rate at which they sheltered us from television, video games, etc. Of course that didn't last long, but I've found that it has had a lasting effect on me as I want to purge my insides when I spend time with children who spend all of their time that way--especially when they are in Christian homes--nothing frustrates me more than that.
My gut tells me to shelter my kids from gore, war, myopia, apathy, etc. I think that is genuinely one side of the coin when it comes to good parenting--good sheltering. But then as I read through Lord of the Flies, and especially as a much older person, I found so much truth in it. That the true beast, the true savage is the one that lives within us and around us in others. And yes, this is very Gospel, just go hang out with Augustine. So as a parent, I'm also obligated to show the other side of the coin--the ugliness of our true nature. This book can have a positive impression and is very teachable, and I would say don't just let a developing child (by age or mental age) just pick up this book without help navigating it.
The controversy doesn't really end there for me though. At what point is a kid ready to know those hard truths of the Gospel? That this world and even our very selves are destroyed and destructive beyond imagination? I'll be honest, I have no idea. But I can also say that for me, I lived a life that was pretty screwed up to begin with, so it wasn't too much of a shock. But the real shock was seeing the imperfection of perceived good people. When you realize that adults aren't always going to act like adults. But this is one reason why I'm really drawn to those with screwy lives, that can get this end of the Gospel. The hard part is teaching them to hope and dream.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Reactionism and Church History
I was reading a book, Singles at the Crossroads by Al Hsu, and he proposed the idea that when looking at singleness, reactionism has played a huge role in the Church's theology of singleness, marriage and family. And since I've recently finished (and passed) my Church History class, it was quite interesting to follow Hsu's understanding of Church history. He argues that early Christians reacted against the OT belief that family equated with social salvation. Jesus put singleness and marriage on the same plane. Yet in their reactionism to the Jewish standard, and much much more so the Gnostics, the early church supported celibacy. When celibacy failed, during the Reformation, the Protestant Churches started a new norm in reaction to celibacy that was so pro-family that eventually (as we see now) that marriage is seen as a more worthy choice.
I'm totally concerned by this! How much of our Christianity and our theology is a reaction to the secular or the culture? Granted, I am usually one to say yes, Jesus is seen through culture, but I think there is also a limit to that as well, where we begin to create our own version of Christianity. Think! Yes, we do need to be react when the Reverend Birdsong types show up at college campus' and tell of a distorted Gospel. But at what point does our reaction also become a new Gospel? Or becoming a new distorted Gospel because it is reaction. At what point (and how) do we turn and move the Gospel back to center? Be assured that I myself have a lot to do as well as I realize how much I have internalized the A-good-Chrisitian-is-a-good-family-oriented-person over the busting-open-kingdom-doors-as-a Single person.
It's so complicated that that admission of my internalization is all I can comment on at the moment. The rest is too overwhelming.
I'm totally concerned by this! How much of our Christianity and our theology is a reaction to the secular or the culture? Granted, I am usually one to say yes, Jesus is seen through culture, but I think there is also a limit to that as well, where we begin to create our own version of Christianity. Think! Yes, we do need to be react when the Reverend Birdsong types show up at college campus' and tell of a distorted Gospel. But at what point does our reaction also become a new Gospel? Or becoming a new distorted Gospel because it is reaction. At what point (and how) do we turn and move the Gospel back to center? Be assured that I myself have a lot to do as well as I realize how much I have internalized the A-good-Chrisitian-is-a-good-family-oriented-person over the busting-open-kingdom-doors-as-a Single person.
It's so complicated that that admission of my internalization is all I can comment on at the moment. The rest is too overwhelming.
Reactionism
Reactionism. It has been on my mind lately. It came back as I turned on the news to find that the latest headline is "outrage" over Rick Warren being chosen by Obama to open the Inauguration with prayer.
The outrage being televised is that liberals are upset that Obama, who claims to be an advocate for gays and lesbians (yet who also ironically when asked, supports one-man-one-woman marriage and Biden outrightly says he's against gay marriage), would choose Obama an evangelical conservative who is pro-life, pro-hetero marriage.
However, I am equally certain that certain evangelicals are now convinced that now Rick Warren is a sellout to politicians and Jesus will come back even sooner. For them, it would be a different type of outrage.
So at what point does reactionism come full circle? Liberals ask for equality for all, and then have issues with a choice who Obama claims is part of his choices for diversity that represents the country for the Inauguration. And then conservative evangelicals cry out for evangelical involvement in the mainstream, especially politics, but not for the "wrong politician."
And from this article, an Episcopalian bishop in D.C.(?) claims that Warren is not a representative of the true loving God. I think that Obama and Warren would both agree with me that it is more about reconciliation. And that my dear brothers and sisters is also part of the story of our loving God, that we come together even while messed up and not on the same page...it's about disagreeing without being disagreeable--the same concept that many of us voted on Obama for.
The outrage being televised is that liberals are upset that Obama, who claims to be an advocate for gays and lesbians (yet who also ironically when asked, supports one-man-one-woman marriage and Biden outrightly says he's against gay marriage), would choose Obama an evangelical conservative who is pro-life, pro-hetero marriage.
However, I am equally certain that certain evangelicals are now convinced that now Rick Warren is a sellout to politicians and Jesus will come back even sooner. For them, it would be a different type of outrage.
So at what point does reactionism come full circle? Liberals ask for equality for all, and then have issues with a choice who Obama claims is part of his choices for diversity that represents the country for the Inauguration. And then conservative evangelicals cry out for evangelical involvement in the mainstream, especially politics, but not for the "wrong politician."
And from this article, an Episcopalian bishop in D.C.(?) claims that Warren is not a representative of the true loving God. I think that Obama and Warren would both agree with me that it is more about reconciliation. And that my dear brothers and sisters is also part of the story of our loving God, that we come together even while messed up and not on the same page...it's about disagreeing without being disagreeable--the same concept that many of us voted on Obama for.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Evolution and Africa
So as of late I have picked up a book on Africa in preparation for my trip this summer to Uganda. Yes, for those of you who do not know, I'm going to Uganda and Rwanda for 2 weeks on a pilgrimmage with Duke Divinity School--it should be absolutely amazing and a true answer to prayer. But as I'm reading the book, I'm stumbling over (and groaning over) the many references to Evolution.
Forgive that I come off as a complete fundamentalist in my struggles over this issue, but I just don't believe in it. I can't believe that humans derived from monkeys--I see the resemblance, but I trust the Genesis account. Now granted I find certain aspects of evolutionary biology and anthropology extremely boring subject matter, I don't believe that it should be totally chucked out--especially for those in those areas of study. But I'm just at a loss for how to respond in my annoyance. Annoyance at the pervasiveness of evolution in the current book I'm reading and in the culture, but also at my lack of clarity and ability to communicate what I think/believe is false or true about it, since I definately do not believe in chucking all of science due to a few Scriptural problems with it. I'm annoyed that it makes me want to skip large chunks of the book I'm reading because I find it so at odds with my beliefs that it seems like silliness to me...and also somewhat mystical--like reading a gnostic text or watching Joel Osteen on tv.
How do I go to a land that for so long has experienced oppression by my own people (because of both the Bible and Darwin), and then not believe in such a pro-African anthropology such as the culture hearths? I'm having such trouble reconciling.
But here is something I find helpful in the midst of my struggle that I found in a book by Thomas E. Schmidt in Straight and Narrow?: Compassion and Clarity in the Homosexuality Debate (yes, I know, that is a can of worms on its own). But he says he believes in "the primacy and finality of the Bible's authority for faith and practice" meaning "that Scripture is the first place to look and the last place of appeal for guidance...Human experience, human traditions, and human reason...[are] a few examples of positive input [for authority] and are essential participants in a conversation intended to apply Scripture to our lives. To say that they have no place, that the Bible speaks alone, is simplistic and perhaps deceptive--there is always some interpretation going on."
I like that Scmidt argues that we cannot be ideologues. In the particular quandary that he studies (homosexuality), he argues that there is a complex theological case against it. I also like that my professor, Ellen Davis, argues that the issue is too messy and will not truly be resolved by the Church in our lifetimes. So I can take comfort and do some sort of settling in the ambiguity, and hopefully reading and responding with love when it comes to these hot button issues that truly are complex, where Scripture and Experience seem to collide.
Forgive that I come off as a complete fundamentalist in my struggles over this issue, but I just don't believe in it. I can't believe that humans derived from monkeys--I see the resemblance, but I trust the Genesis account. Now granted I find certain aspects of evolutionary biology and anthropology extremely boring subject matter, I don't believe that it should be totally chucked out--especially for those in those areas of study. But I'm just at a loss for how to respond in my annoyance. Annoyance at the pervasiveness of evolution in the current book I'm reading and in the culture, but also at my lack of clarity and ability to communicate what I think/believe is false or true about it, since I definately do not believe in chucking all of science due to a few Scriptural problems with it. I'm annoyed that it makes me want to skip large chunks of the book I'm reading because I find it so at odds with my beliefs that it seems like silliness to me...and also somewhat mystical--like reading a gnostic text or watching Joel Osteen on tv.
How do I go to a land that for so long has experienced oppression by my own people (because of both the Bible and Darwin), and then not believe in such a pro-African anthropology such as the culture hearths? I'm having such trouble reconciling.
But here is something I find helpful in the midst of my struggle that I found in a book by Thomas E. Schmidt in Straight and Narrow?: Compassion and Clarity in the Homosexuality Debate (yes, I know, that is a can of worms on its own). But he says he believes in "the primacy and finality of the Bible's authority for faith and practice" meaning "that Scripture is the first place to look and the last place of appeal for guidance...Human experience, human traditions, and human reason...[are] a few examples of positive input [for authority] and are essential participants in a conversation intended to apply Scripture to our lives. To say that they have no place, that the Bible speaks alone, is simplistic and perhaps deceptive--there is always some interpretation going on."
I like that Scmidt argues that we cannot be ideologues. In the particular quandary that he studies (homosexuality), he argues that there is a complex theological case against it. I also like that my professor, Ellen Davis, argues that the issue is too messy and will not truly be resolved by the Church in our lifetimes. So I can take comfort and do some sort of settling in the ambiguity, and hopefully reading and responding with love when it comes to these hot button issues that truly are complex, where Scripture and Experience seem to collide.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
A Track Before the Technology of the Train for the Terrain
I watched one of my classic, go-to-feel-new movies: Under the Tuscan Sun. Perhaps it was the beauty of Tuscan Italy, the meszmerizing Diane Lane, and the suave Italianos which had for all of these years distracted me from the actual storyline of the movie, which is a work in its own right.
A divorcee, a fixer-upper, a risk...a story that has met me in both romance and heartbreak. But today it struck a new chord in me. Francis was given the beautiful advice in the midst of her sadness to press on in hope and faith when her world was shattering, when she thought that moving on with her life in bold ways could be a mistake. A friend told her, "You know, in the Alps, they built a railroad track that was greatly needed long before a train was invented that could withstand the arduous journey. It isn't until the end of the movie, that all of Francis' wishes come true, just in a different way, as she realizes her prayers (though to random Catholic saints) were not in vain.
I feel that my life lately has been a lot of track building, on tough terrain well-before a train would meet the trestle. The past year or so has found me picking up my bags and moving to an obscure and at first unwelcome portion of the state, a sudden career change with school training at the place I had always dreamed of attending, budgeting and saving for God knows what (I mean that), and family planning without a husband anywhere NEAR on the horizon (a result of medical choices to go with the new-found disease), and I'm sure the list could go on and on.
Building a track is tough work, and it can mostly only be built with hope. Yet I find as Francis does, that the building, trusting, hoping gives her a new name, Franchesca, and will do the same for me. Slowly I find that as life goes on that as I just keep going, just keep praying, just keep hoping, that my dreams and wishes do indeed come true, just NEVER as I have imagined them. And for that, they are the more sweet. The handiwork of God, and not by me.
A divorcee, a fixer-upper, a risk...a story that has met me in both romance and heartbreak. But today it struck a new chord in me. Francis was given the beautiful advice in the midst of her sadness to press on in hope and faith when her world was shattering, when she thought that moving on with her life in bold ways could be a mistake. A friend told her, "You know, in the Alps, they built a railroad track that was greatly needed long before a train was invented that could withstand the arduous journey. It isn't until the end of the movie, that all of Francis' wishes come true, just in a different way, as she realizes her prayers (though to random Catholic saints) were not in vain.
I feel that my life lately has been a lot of track building, on tough terrain well-before a train would meet the trestle. The past year or so has found me picking up my bags and moving to an obscure and at first unwelcome portion of the state, a sudden career change with school training at the place I had always dreamed of attending, budgeting and saving for God knows what (I mean that), and family planning without a husband anywhere NEAR on the horizon (a result of medical choices to go with the new-found disease), and I'm sure the list could go on and on.
Building a track is tough work, and it can mostly only be built with hope. Yet I find as Francis does, that the building, trusting, hoping gives her a new name, Franchesca, and will do the same for me. Slowly I find that as life goes on that as I just keep going, just keep praying, just keep hoping, that my dreams and wishes do indeed come true, just NEVER as I have imagined them. And for that, they are the more sweet. The handiwork of God, and not by me.
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