tumblr

switching over....
now writing/posting pictures/etc. on ajbattles.tumblr.com

Day in L.A.

etc. on flickr. 

[deeds and such]

Our life does not consist in making up beautiful phrases but in performing beautiful deeds. - Athenagoras

I like these words. For someone who gets a lot of clarity and thrill out of emptying ideas onto paper, it’s easy to get wrapped up in making beautiful phrases. So easy, really, that I forget about living them. And I focus more on reading or learning or producing, which is silly, not to mention tiring.

So along with all the earlier ramblings from this week, what I’ve been thinking about in the last few days is living in deeds and not in my mind, or in books, or on the computer. We need beautiful deeds and actions first, before we can even think about producing words in hindsight.

When August ends, I’m sure what I will remember about this season is the action over the thought, and the deeds over the words. The stuff that marks us is found in living tasting running foothills driving breathing rising early…

driving down Foothill and past the Mission each morning, swimming pools, The National’s High Violet album, cooking meals and baking an unhealthy amount, weekly Bachelorette watching (did I just say that?), running on Shoreline, tennis games and sitting on decks with blankets…

I am a fan of this season of exploding goodness. 

[praying/whining]

Summer is good for a lot of things, and lately it’s been good at helping me see my insides more clearly. And although these weeks have been full of some very special and temporary things, even more than the sunshine or hiking Inspiration Peak or leisurely dinners on the deck, I’ve craved being settled. Being rooted, planted, and settled deeply in something wider than myself. Living as I tend to do – scattered and small-minded – just makes me feel untethered. My life can become about a lot of little things if I let it, and recently I have. I need to settle down, or as my roommates of Tavilla 302 would say, simmer down.

So a little while ago I started praying a sort of scary prayer, and asked God to shake me out of the shell I had constructed around my own small life, because that shell stopped me from noticing anything bigger. I say it was scary because I assumed that I needed something jarring or difficult to reorient me. I asked to be rocked and reeled, hoping that when the dust settled I too would be more settled.

As it usually seems to go, God has been responding to me in his own, sometimes hazy, and often completely out-of-left-field way. While I prayed dramatically he responded quietly, taking my whining in stride. Instead of hitting me hard with a lesson, he’s been shifting my perspective in really gentle ways, like a slow Saturday with time to think or a three-hour, super energizing conversation with a good friend. During this conversation Katie reminded me, probably without even realizing, that God is perfectly able to work through little moments as well as big. His answers to my prayers have been very sweet recently and I’m grateful for the ways he settles us down. Grateful that the people we love pray on our behalf and that we can take on the privilege of praying for them. Praying, or whining as I often do, is a gift. 

[enough]

“Breathe, rest, practice the idea of enough.” 

- Shauna Niequist

(I like the thought of practicing this idea, of limiting ourselves in order to rest more and give more to the task at hand.)

[good words.]

Isaiah, chapter 55 via The Message

"Listen to me, listen well: East only the best,
fill yourself with only the finest.
Pay attention, come close now,
listen carefully to my life-giving, life-nourishing words.
I'm making a lasting covenant commitment with you,
the same that I made with David: sure, solid, enduring love.

Seek God while he's here to be found,
pray to him while he's close at hand.
Let the wicked abandon their way of life
and the evil their way of thinking.
Let them come back to God, who is merciful,
come back to our God, who is lavish with forgiveness. 

"For as the sky soars high above earth,
so the way I work surpasses the way you work,
and the way I think is beyond the way you think.
Just as rain and snow descend from the skies
and don't go back until they've watered the earth,
Doing their work of making things grow and blossom,
producing seed for farmers and food for the hungry,
So will the words that come out of my mouth
not come back empty-handed.
They'll do the work I sent them to do,
they'll complete the assignment I gave them.

So you'll go out in joy,
you'll be led into a whole and complete life.
The mountains and hills will lead the parade, 
bursting with song.
All the trees of the forest will join the procession,
exuberant with applause."


(I'm thankful to know the God who 
is ultimate acceptance and lavish 
forgiveness, the one who courts the 
outsiders, exiles, disfigured and forgotten.)

[summer afternoon]

Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language. 

- Henry James

pictures of summer afternoons (and evenings, and mornings, on flickr).