(>insert Korean characters)

Yeejoo and I just wrote English lyrics for a Korean hymn! I will post it up when I have it.

Yeejoo is my Korean housemate who accepted Christ last semester, when he came here to study Chemical Engineering. He's been really kind: lending me his Macbook Pro for almost 2 weeks because my Macbook crashed the first morning I was in Tucson; showing me around the house; inviting me to Holy Communion at his church and lending me his medicine, which stopped my wound from further infection (there's scab yay! I love to eat scabs.)

I know there are copyright laws, but we changed the meaning of the song. I can't read Korean for nuts, but the literal translation has many cliche "praise phrases" that are vague, and it's a good idea not to use that as the English version. The melody is great though. So we played around with word structure, included the Trinity and thus the Gospel, and alluded to Psalm 119:18, "Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law." Yeejoo says the Korean translation of Psalm 119 uses Old Korean, which obscures some readers and caused others to misunderstand the Bible, so Psalm 119 is a tough nut that people avoid.

Very rudimentary. It's my first time writing lyrics, and I respect people in church at home who TRANSLATE ENGLISH SONGS INTO CHINESE. That is just.unthinkable. We kept the last two phrases because it was so beautiful.

For the sake of the Lord's kingdom and His will,
O Lord, lead me.

And...presenting to you the best of both worlds! one of my favourite comics+the scab that's formed on my wound (good news yo)

"a small scab surcharge"

My Red Badge of Courage

I swerved too hard on a gravel-filled road while cycling on a new route home just now. A driver in his white suburban beside me and a lady pruning the plants in her house came out to see if I was ok. The whole of my sole was sticky because there was so much blood oozing out (Man, if I'd donated that blood).

Then I went home and dripped blood in the living room and on my other slipper because I needed the first-aid box from Dean III. Figuring out that I totally shouldn't use the kitchen scissors to cut that flap of heel off, I asked Max for a pair of scissors. Thank God he had one, and he worked in a veterinary before, so he helped me pry open the remaining bits of skin that had gravel stuck inside. He cut them and all the while, the forceps and the blade of his thick scissors dug and scraped against my wound. And that was after hydrogen peroxide was applied. Double ouch. And let's skip the part concerning my suppressed and constipated reactions to the cutting, bleeding and digging.

>>> I'm leaving my wound to dry and it's perpetually glazed with pus-yellow plasma that trickles down my sole. But thank God I didn't have to dig out the gravel like I did when I was 15 (a large part of the skin on the ball of the SAME foot came out because I was too vigorously playing mess games on the road). Thanks Max (U DA MAN). And I'll walk as little as possible and cycle as much as possible. I should be fit for hiking Picacho Peak on Saturday morning though.

I like to think that my mum will be proud of me when I tell her about it, though in reality, she'll probably get worried and chide me.

A New Role for Iraqi Militants: Patrons of the Arts

"True Islam patronizes the arts."
--Sheik Mazin, Baghdad's newest patron of the arts

Thoughts:
Depiction, Sufism, Spirituality of the arts & a despaired humanity

Tea Partay and Ivy Leaguers

"but they are just jealous cos' our parents run the nation"

cookie is a sometime food

The Windhover: To Christ Our Lord

"I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dáwn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rólling level úndernéath him steady áir, & stríding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl & gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, -- the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty & valour & act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, o my chevalier!
No wónder of it: shéer plód makes plóugh down síllion
Shine, & blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gáll themsélves, & gásh góld-vermílion."

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

that obscenity and profanity which I love

This is fucking ridiculous and this is so fucked up!!!

I was cycling past the field in front of the Old Main and this hostile college girl was yelling at the people at the Justice for All exhibit as she cycled past it. She was definitely hateful, profane and obscene, but so were the three-foot tall graphics of aborted babies, cut-up abdomens, limbs smaller than a quarter that shrivel up to an unidentifiable mass of bloodied tissue and muscle.

I've heard of more vehement responses...a quarterback from the college team confronting the Christian volunteers and workers manning the exhibit, wanting to tear the exhibit down because his girlfriend had been crying for two weeks since she saw the exhibit, people protesting with placards right beside the exhibit...I cannot help but wonder why people are so belligerent towards the graphic but uncensored truth?

Some Christians disapprove of using the shock technique to evangelize, but in a graphic, impatient culture that seeks efficiency and instant gratification, are pictures of the covered-up, hushed truth so incongruent with it? Did Christ not use vividly vile imagery to publicly scorn the Pharisees and the Saduccees, calling them "vipers", "a child of hell", "hypocrites" and "whitewashed tombs" full of "dead people's bones and all uncleanness"?

What about the most defamatorily vulgar and offensive thing in the world - the cross of brutal torture where my God, our God, became Man to bleed to death? Worse, he was abandoned by God because of our absolutely sinful state, which was more abominable than a woman's waste blood is to a Jew.

My Saviour says the world hates Him: "For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed" (John 3:20).

There is great reason for me to rejoice, for the cross I have been crucified on is the cross that Christ bore. It is one of shame, rude obscenity and nauseating gore, which, to people who reject Christ like they hate the graphics of abortion put up on campus, is a "stumbling block", a "folly", but to us who have seen the wonder of His grace, "the power of God and the wisdom of God" (I Corinthians 1:23-24).

And I know that I was once a liar, a murderer, a thief, just like mothers who murder their babies, Hitler, the men who beat 10-year-old Emmett Till to death and all who reject God. God is able to save, He is mighty to save us from the burning, tormenting hold of the devil, and I pray that God renew my heart to testify for the Light of this world, who has placed in me a treasure so eternal and joyful nothing can ever compare.

Why

"We rode into town the other day, just me and my daddy. He said I’d finally reached that age, and I could ride next to him on a horse that of course was not quite as wide. We heard a crowd of people shouting and so we stopped to find out why. There
was that man that my dad said he loved, but today there was fear in his eyes.

So I said, "Daddy why are they screaming? Why are the faces of some of them beaming? Why is he dressed in that bright purple robe? I bet that crown hurts him more than he shows. Daddy please, can’t you do something? He looks as though he’s gonna cry. You said he is stronger than all of those guys. Daddy please tell me why, why does everyone want him to die?"

Later that day the sky grew cloudy and Daddy said I should go inside. Some how he knew things would get stormy. Boy was he right, but I could not keep from wondering if there was something he had to hide. So after he left I had to find out, I was not afraid of getting lost, so I followed the crowds to a hill where I knew men had been killed, and I heard a voice come from a cross.

And it said, "Father why are they screaming? Why are the faces of some of them beaming? Why are they casting their lots for my robes? This crown of thorns hurts me more than it shows. Father please, can’t you do something? I know that You must hear my cry. I thought I could handle a cross of this size, Father remind me why, why does everyone want me to die? When will I understand why?"

"My precious Son, I hear them screaming. I’m watching the face of the enemy beaming but soon I will clothe you in robes of My own. Jesus this hurts me much more than You know. But this dark hour I must do nothing, though I’ve heard your unbearable cry — the power in your blood destroys all the lies. Soon you’ll see past their unmerciful eyes. Look there below see the child trembling by her father’s side. Now I can tell you why, she is why you must die."

Why, Nicole Nordeman