Rivene’s Journey

The Dreads

A Watercooler Wednesday post with a twist: this week’s post is not from me.

It’s written by my good friend Brian King. He has an awesome fundraiser he is doing to raise money for Invisible Children. I don’t want to steal his thunder, but I did want to say one thing: 

Brian is one of the craziest kats I’ve ever met, and I totally 100% endorse this fundraiser.

Let’s bring hope to Uganda! (And embarrassment to godly brothers!)

~~

“Hi friends,

If you haven’t heard yet, I’m putting together an awesome event to raise money and awareness for Invisible Children. They were the first group to bring the sufferings of the Ugandan people to the American consciousness.

Since their beginning in 2003, Invisible Children has been working to free some of more than 30,000 children that have been captured by militia groups and forced into becoming soldiers.

Recently, the level of violence has been receding, but over 1.5 million people are still living in refugee camps. These camps are ridden with disease and malnutrition, but the refugees are virtually trapped because they lack the resources they need to return home. Invisible Children continues to help these people by providing schooling and other resources to enable them to return to their villages with their needs met and hope restored.

The Mission

After hearing about these children, I have been looking for a way to help. This is what I came up with: in order to raise money for Invisible Children, I am going to auction off my dreadlocks on eBay!

“That’s crazy!” you might be saying, and I’d agree with you  But crazy or not, it’s true. I have been in contact with Invisible Children, and they have shared their enthusiasm about this novel fundraising method. So here’s how it’s going to work.

- I’m going to put up each of my dreads on eBay, so there will be 35 individual auctions. I’ll be starting the auction on Wednesday, July 16th.

- Then (here’s where you come in!!!) donors bid big money on eBay. Once I put the eBay posting up, I’ll send you the link.

- If you win a dread, congratulations! By adopting a lock, you can tell me what to do with it: dye it whatever color you want, send me beads/charms to put on it, … be creative.

The Dye

- On July 25th, I will be going up to Knotty Boy salon up in Vancouver, BC. I have told them about Adopt-a-Lock and they’re so excited about it that they’re going to dye all my dreads for free! They will dye each dread according to its winner’s choice.

- I will then keep my dreads all crazy-colored (1-3 weeks depending on how much is raised, see my blog for details), and then cut them off.

- I will donate 100% of the profits (only subtracting the eBay fees) to Invisible Children.

- Also, the company I’m interning with this summer will match the gift amount 100%. So $1 raised = $2 for Invisible Children.

- Finally, all the auction winners will be emailed an official Adopt-a-Lock adoption certificate including a picture of their adopted dread and a personal thanks by me! Kind of like adopting a star, but way cooler.

Come on, there are bazillions of stars and only 35 dreads! But similar to adopting a star, I’m not planning on actually sending my disembodied dreads to the winners. I’m betting that most people won’t actually want one in the first place. But that being said, if you really want your adopted dread, I will be happy to send it your way.

I think that sums up the Adopt-a-Lock campaign fairly well. For more details, please check out my Adopt-a-Lock blog.

~~

I am really stoked about this! As a recap, here’s what you can do to help,

1) Go to http://adoptalock.blogspot.com/ to find out when official auctioning begins on Wednesday June 16

2) Attempt to outbid my Cotton Candy Pink with Green Hair-Clips

3) Pray for the ministry of Invisible Children

Dreads for Uganda!

This video is adorable…

for sloths. But let me recount my sleep record this past weekend:

    Friday night: 10 hours

    Saturday night: 13 hours

    Sunday night: 9 hours + a 2 hour nap

That is 33 hours in 3 days.

(gwah..just thinking about the amount of time I wasted makes me nauseous)

Honestly, I don’t know what happened. I worked a lot this week, though nothing more than usual; I did not get enough sleep, also nothing unusual.

But when Sunday morning came around, I began it like that sloth - crawling around my bed with intentions to embrace the day - but puddling around from one spot to another, I just could not gather the energy to get up. When I did finally get up, around 2:00pm, I felt like a cotton farm had been planted inside my head. 

Is there some kind of strange summer sickness I should be aware of?

The summer-slothilitis, or some such disorder? Symptoms: apathy, lethargy, a general unwillingness to get out of bed and do something useful with one’s life?

I guess I better stop laying off the coffee..

Watercooler Wednesday Post

It seems like everyone wants to know how I experience God these days.

Friends have asked, my pastor asked in last Sunday’s sermon, a book I’m reading mentioned it (The Forgotten Spurgeon by Iain Murray), and even Randy alluded to it in his post.

Of course, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t take a chance to throw in some kind of word/grammar/writing moment. This week’s lesson is from Dictionary.com,

Def. Sacrament

2.	(often initial capital letter) Also called Holy Sacrament. the Eucharist or Lord’s Supper.

I am going to focus on definitions 1 & 4.

I like the idea of a sacrament being visible; some of mine are, some of mine aren’t, but they are all means by which I receive grace from God. They are also ways in which I experience a feeling of awe, a sense of God’s presence as a tangible reality – not seen, but definitely felt – and ways that I am encouraged in my faith. I picked three, but they are not the only ways I experience grace, just three that came to mind.

1) Truth in unexpected places

It amazes me how valid Romans 1:19 is. 

As I read novels, short stories, film scripts, poetry - written sometimes by the most godless and anti-Christian of people, I realize that truth cannot be silenced.

Here is one example of many,

“He sang of names and words, of the building blocks beneath the real, the worlds that make worlds, the truths beneath the way things are; he sang of appropriate ends and just conclusions for those who would have hurt him and his. He sang the world.”

Care to guess who wrote these lines? Some may guess C.S. Lewis in The Magicians’ Nephew – the imagery is certainly similar – but it was not Lewis. It is the song sung by Fat Charlie in Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys.

Neil Gaiman is a man to whom great talents have been bestowed, though he does not credit it to God’s glory. Still it is beautiful language, written in Gaiman’s wonderful voice, and whether he meant it to occur or not, I often experience grace when I read his works.

2) Gracious conversation

It happens more often than I deserve that I will be speaking with a friend, a new acquaintance, a member of my family, or one of my co-workers, when something about the conversation shall spark an idea for a story, or a revelation about the character of God, or sometimes something as small as a reminder to a task left undone.

These brilliant flashes of inspiration, like tinder sparks to a fire, are grace-filled moments where God the Holy Spirit is visiting me through the ministry of those around me. They are divinely deposited moments of exhortation, reminder, inspiration, even affirmation.

I believe it was Mark Twain who said, “I can live for two months on a good compliment.”

3) Silence

This one does not happen regularly, which is strange given the blessings I accrue from it. 

But it is hard to have the computer shut, the music off, the book closed, just sitting and listening, meditating, sometimes not even praying.

I think that’s why it is a sacrament for me, because it takes God’s grace for me to believe that the tasks left undone are best left undone when compared to His silent presence.

I experienced this grace tonight (ironic given the frantic effort I had spent attempting to write this post!).

I was lying on my bed, watching the dance of light as the sun set; it set the leaves outside burning in its dying light; the wind rustled the leaves and scattered the light like crimson sparks. It was a grace-filled moment; my heart was stilled of its frantic efforts, and (ironically) more able to do the tasks before me.

Silence may be a void of noise, but it is a fullness of God’s presence.

~~

Are there sacraments you adhere to? Unique ways in which you experience God’s grace?

I would love to read your comments (remember #2?).

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

To start, it was my first 4th without fireworks. Believe me, I know, this was a great tragedy.

Instead, I helped friends move into their first house. After our second load, we took a bbq-break, followed by glorious strawberry-rhubarb pie with vanilla ice cream. Later that night, completely exhausted from a full day of moving, a friend and I wandered back to my apartment and listened to some music, Spring and Summer, by John Foreman of Switchfoot.

Of course, I mustn’t overlook the controversy that developed during the move; there was a great deal of playful banter between me and my new acquaintance, Patrick.

Patrick goes to my church, but does not share my view of marriage. This bantering led to some tense moments, and some fresh insights. Patrick (the Banterer) challenged my selfish motives for remaining single, which mostly center on my desire to have time to write. Also, his criteria for a spouse differ widely from my own. He has 2 standards:

                     1) Christian

                     2) Someone who can put up with you

I asked, “Is that it?” I want to believe my higher standards are there for godly reasons, but I suppose they can sometimes be selfish. 

He also challenged my stance that God has given me a season of singleness as a gift, out of which I can write with more focus.

“Authors can have spouses,” he argued. 

I agreed, pointing out that C.S. Lewis experienced the blessing of marriage after 50 years as a bachelor. My friend James piped in and asked how long Lewis was a Christian before marrying. 

“About 25 years,” I answered, “and I have only been a Christian for 11. I’ve got 15 more years of undistracted writing!” 

~~

Forks

Also, as I was writing this post in a cafe with my roommate, an early childhood memory came up.

It was triggered when he asked me to switch out his laptop power cords, one of them being slighter higher voltage than the other. I told him about a time in Norway when I wanted to find out what would happen if I placed my American-made alarm clock into the double-voltage Norwegian outlet.

My roommate countered that things labeled, “Warning: Flammable” were rarely so spectacular. But there was a time from my childhood that was. 

I have always been a bit of a doubting Thomas, and though I was warned, I wanted to see what would happen if I placed a fork into an electric outlet..

       sparks, smoke, 

       a triggered fire alarm, 

       my mother’s yells in the background

       my chicken legs carrying me out of spanking range

Of course, now that I’m an adult, I wonder what would happen with 2 forks..

A poor quality cellphone pic of the view that ruined my creative output.

I was working on a somewhat new story today, having rounded out at 15,485 words when I decided the sun was just too nice to stay indoors.

If you enjoy the discipline of writing, I don’t recommend window seats on beautiful days, unless you mean to play instead of work. Though I suppose I should enjoy the few sunny days Seattle will get..

There’s not much to say with the story at this point, apart from the fact that it involves a missing princess and a silver comb that she gives to my main character with the instructions, “brush your hair and she’ll be there.”

I’ve thrown in a coldhearted sister, a white-suited demon, a negligent father king, and even a Medieval musician. I believe I’m on my way to a faery tale of some sort.

I suspect the final story to round out between 45,000-60,000 words.

The hope is to get this story out of my creative system before the road trip this fall, allowing me to focus my creative energies there. And in case you were wondering, my prayers for that trip have been answered - my buddy Sammy wants to join me, and though I keep giving him chances to back out, he keeps showing interest, which is a huge blessing to me. All writers should have such good friends. 

The question now is what audio book we will listen to on our trip.

Any suggestions?