happy birthday wolfgang!

i love my sister chubbis wubbis bone
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

when the totality of our daily lives it lived 'from above' that is, as the beloved sent into the world, then everyone we meet and everything that happens to us becomes a unique opportunity to choose for the life that cannot be conquered by death. thus, both joy and suffering become part of the way to our spiritual fulfillment. i found this vision movingly expressed by the novelist julien green in a letter to his friend, the french philosopher jacques maritain. he writes, 'when you think of the mystical experience of many saints, you may ask yourself whether joy and suffering arent aspects of the same phenomenon on a very high level. an analogy, crazy for sure, comes to my mind: extreme cold burns. it seems nearly certain, no, it is certain that we can only go to God through suffering and that this suffering becomes joy because it finally is the same thing'

'when joy and pain are both opportunities to say 'yes' to our divine childhood then they are more alike than they are different. when the experience of being awarded a prize and the experience of being found lacking in excellence both offer us a chance to claim our true identity as the 'beloved' of God, these experiences are more similar then they are different. when feeling lonely and feeling at home both hold a call to discover more fully who the God is whose children we are, these feelings are more united than they are distinct. when, finally, both living and dying bring us closer to the full realization of our spiritual selfhood, they are not the great opposites the world would have us believe; they are, instead, two sides of the same mystery of God's love'

-henri nouwen

Patience has its limits. Take it too far, and it's cowardice.
- George Jackson

my top 50 songs of 2005 (not in order)

1 cheese on bread- how long have you...
2 embrace- gravity
3 supergrass- alright
4 sufjan stevens- john wayne gacy, jr.
5 coldplay- till kingdom come
6 feist- mushaboom
7 emiliana torrini- today has been o.k.
8 ben jelen- setting of the sun
9 anna nalick- breathe (2 am)
10 patty griffin- mary
11 cloud room- hey now now
12 blone redhead- in particular
13 bloc party- banquet
14 gabby la la- boogie woogie man in a black dress
15 the moldy peaches- anyone else but you
16 david mead- nashville
17 kraftwerk- pocket calculator
18 travis- turn
19 homemade knives- virginia
20 andrew bird- fake palindromes
21 mirah- cold cold water
22 a sides- sidewalk chalk
23 ben folds- adelaide
24 blood sugars- first come takers
25 devotchka- we're leaving
26 we are scientists- this scene is dead
27 le tigre- get off the internet
28 tracy chapman- baby can i hold you
29 why?- waterfalls
30 the delgados- keep on breathing
31 the fray- over my head
32 patty griffin- kite song
33 broken social scene- major label debut
34 architecture of helsinki- the owls go
35 imogen heap- the moment i said it
36 johnny cash- ring of fire
37 spoon- small stakes
38 the black eyed peas- my style
39 the decemberists/gabby la la- the chimbley sweep
40 mew- the zookeeper's boy
41 regina spektor- carbon monoxide
42 sigur ros- saeglopur
43 beck- missing
44 patrick wolf- gypsy king
45 hillsong united- all i need is you
46 christa black- let you down
47 mat kearney- nothing left to lose
48 weasley- lorenzo
49 M.I.A- galang
50 the subways- rock and roll queen

"when someone seeks then it easily happens that his eyes see only the thing that he seeks, and he is able to find nothing, to take in nothing because he always thinks about the thing he is seeking, because he has one goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. seeking means: having a goal. but finding means: being free, being open, having no goal. one, may truly be a seeker, for , in striving toward your goal, you fail to see certain things that are right under your nose."