Me.

A year has passed...

I know I haven’t posted anything in months – to be honest, I’m not sure I’m cut out for the whole blogging thing, but today is mine and Jake’s one-year anniversary, which obviously is special. So today as I was drinking my morning coffee out of my special Precious Moments wedding mug, a little song came to me.

Thought I’d share the lyrics:

This time is ours, your open arms

These sunset fields, here at Carrigan Farm

This swollen love reminds me of

God’s spilling soul that somehow always fills me up

Every vow is true

Gathered friends draw near as I give my heart to you

And every word is true, you mean them too

Oh, I’m happy to be here with you

At Carrigan Farm

I see our families smiling

I see the light upon their face

Here is the promise that fills this place

There is an edge of autumn

But the love it keeps us warm

We’ve started our adventure at Carrigan Farm

Every word is true

Gathered friends draw near as I give my heart to you

And every vow is true, you mean them too

Oh, I’m happy to be here with you

At Carrigan Farm

And these are the laughs and tears

That turn like the seasons that turn in a year

And this is a day worth keeping

This is a day worth dwelling on

This is the day at Carrigan Farm

And I don’t know why, but my heart just smiles

And I know that each day we’re growing older

But we still know the way

To take us to that day

Take me to the day

At Carrigan Farm.

Opening Night!

Tonight is opening night of my show - the show I've been rehearsing for every night for the past eternity it feels like, and finally, opening night is here. I don't think I've blogged about it (I've been too busy rehearsing, ha!), so here's a little info:

Yep. That goth girl in the picture is me. It's a pretty funny show. Pretty hilarious, if I do say so myself. But even so, a lot of the humor comes at the expense of religion. Or at least, of "religious people". I really debated whether or not to even audition for the show. I don't want to be a part of something that makes fun of what I believe.

Basically, the story takes place a few years after 9/11. The character of my Dad - Arthur, had worked in the World Trade Center, and ever since that day, he's been deeply depressed and non-responsive to my Mom and I. My Mom, Sylvia, in order to deal with all of this perhaps, has gone on a "Jesus kick", and is rarely at home. She's always off saving sinners, protesting at the porn store, that sort of thing. Meanwhile, my character, 16-year-old Rachel, has taken to the philosophy that life is meaningless anyway, and has joined the Goth culture.

The play, obviously enough, is about a severely dysfunctional family. And a lot of the jokes are aimed at my crazy, Jesus-lovin', rapture-predicting Mom. So I read the script carefully before auditioning. And what I realized was that while a lot of the laughter comes from the character Sylvia and her stereotypical Christian "born again" antics, the true heart of the play is not centered at making a mockery of faith or proving it wrong or anything of the sort. The true message of the play is that, despite our differences of opinions and creeds, we need to love one another. And that's a message I can get behind.

Of course, it makes me sad that the portrayal of the "Christian" character in this play is a completely loony caricature of the typical, evangelical, "turn-or-burn" type of believer. And it makes me even sadder that most of the people seeing this play will not be Christians. Because that's what a lot of them really believe we're like. I actually think - as offensive as many Christians might find this play to be - it's a play with a convicting message to us. At least, it has convicted me.

What does it matter if we save the souls of the world if we're not loving those people in the process?

I was doing some reading in my Bible today. I've been studying the idea of joy. And I realized that the joy of Jesus indwells us and is made complete in us when we remain in his love, and we remain in his love by obeying his commands. (All this according to John 15:9-11.) Then Jesus goes on to say (in v.12) what his command is: We are to love each other just as Christ loved us. And how did Christ love us? He lay down his life for us. So, we are to love other people with this same sort of sacrificial love (which, it seems to me, is only possible if we are first intent on loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength). It's sort of like a big circle. First, we decide we want to love God, so God tells us that the way we do that is by following his commands. So naturally we want to know, what are these commands? To which we are given the response, "The entire law is summed up in a single command: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" (Galatians 5:14) Love your neighbor as yourself. I don't know about you, but I love myself a whole heck of a lot. In fact, I'll go ahead and say it'd be pretty much impossible for me to love anybody else - even my husband - as much as I love myself, unless I am remaining in Christ, a branch securely fastened to the true vine, receiving all the strength and support and nourishment from him that I need to love others so sacrificially. As it turns out, though, the more we remain in him and truly love those around us, the more fruit we begin to bear. And the bi-product of that? Complete joy! And this joy only makes us fall in love with God more, which makes us want to please him more, so we spend even more time with him and are able to love others even more sacrificially, thus obeying his command...etc, etc., and so the beautiful cycle continues.

And that's the root of why I don't have a problem with this play, or with myself being in it. It makes me uncomfortable at points, yes. But I think that's largely because I can understand why the audience laughs at the "Christian" character of Sylvia. She is a little crazy. She's so caught up in her good intentions of saving the world from hellfire that she completely misses the opportunities to love her own family that are right there in her home. It reminds me of what I need to be doing. I need to be loving people. As much as I love myself.

Anyway, just something I've been thinking about...

Wish me luck tonight! (Or actually, don't. Tell me to break a leg.)

HOME

A while back, I mentioned here that I was working on a couple of different scripts (and that was my excuse for not having blogged consistently - that's still my excuse, btw.) Well, one of them has materialized, so I get to show it to you today!

Recently, I found out that a short film contest called The Doorpost Film Project was going on, which asks film makers to create a seven minute film about one of seven topics (authenticity, community, sacrifice, commitment, truth, identity, or hope), which will then be judged for the possibility of moving on to round two. In round two, the twenty top film makers are asked to write a second script, this time between twelve and thirty minutes in length, and the top five out of those twenty scripts each receive a $40,000 budget to make it. And then, once those five films are made, there's another round of judging and the winner walks away with $100,000.

Yeah.

So, it's a pretty cool contest. I'm not holding my breath that we'll take the grand prize, but hey, it'll be fun to see how far we get.

The topic we picked was community. Hopefully that will be obvious after watching it! And yes, that's me acting in it, too. Feel free to comment on any of it. Criticism is welcome.

The only slightly annoying thing about the process of watching it is that you'll have to create a profile on Doorpost's website in order to view any of the films. Otherwise, they won't play. The good news is, creating a profile only takes two seconds.

And so, without further ado, I present to you - HOME. Enjoy!

Taking a Cue From Mary

I was reading a passage from Luke today - the part where the angel comes to Mary to announce the birth of Christ, and I was struck by a concept that had never really come to me before. At least, not so clearly.

I was thinking about Mary. She was a simple Jewish girl, right? And it hit me today - I bet she knew it. I doubt she had any grand illusions of being anything but a simple Jewish girl. I imagine she viewed herself as pretty ordinary - which struck me in a new way today, because obviously, she's become quite famous for her extraordinariness. And as I was thinking about that, I was thinking how I bet Mary never sat down and strategized on how to live a life of greater meaning. I doubt she saw her life as this great gift to the world that she needed to make sure she made count for all it was worth. You know, the way that we do nowadays. Or maybe I shouldn't generalize you into my umbrella, but at least, I'll admit, the way I do.

There seems to be this little voice in my head that's always whispering, "You're special. You're going to do great things for God with your life... Yes, of course, everyone's special. That's true. But you're extra special, Meagan. You have a calling that has uncommon depth and magnitude of influence. You're supposed to impact a lot of people. You need to be maximizing your potential, you need to start leveraging your gifts and talents... Etc., etc. "

(Yes, the voice in my head uses words like "leverage.") And so you can see, it would seem I have a bit of a complex about my own importance.

I've never asked anyone, so I don't know if this is an issue unique to me, but I kind of imagine that it's not. I have a suspicion that in our modern day and age, with all the commercial propaganda bombarding us at every turn with the idea that "You're worth it," and "You deserve it," and YOU YOU YOU are the king of your world... well, it seems like it might be kind of easy for us to start thinking of ourselves as more important than we are. And perhaps that notion can even slip into our ideas about God's purposes for us.

I'm not saying we should walk around wearing sackcloth, staring at the ground and flogging ourselves. Of course not. We are special. We, out of all creation, are the only thing made in God's image. We were made in the very image of God! So, on one level, we are indeed very "godlike". And that is something to be celebrated.

But what I'm saying is, I think we're in danger of taking ourselves a little too seriously. Maybe that sounds funny to say, but here's what I mean. I know that for me - though most of the time it's with the best of intentions - I start thinking of my life as this really important thing that I need to make sure I use wisely and make every moment count for eternity and be proactive about positioning myself in the places where I can do the most good in the world and "Don't waste your life. Don't waste your life. Don't waste your life." starts pounding in my head 'til I'm nearly sick with it, and... I just don't think that's the point. In fact, I'm beginning to suspect that that sort of thinking clearly misses the point.

I hope I'm making sense. It's not that our lives are not valuable to God. They very much are. It's just, I was thinking about Mary. And I was thinking how she probably wasn't preoccupied with making her life count. She probably didn't expect her life to make it into the history books for its place in furthering God's divine plan. She probably didn't lose sleep over what her life's calling might be. Today, we live in an age of individualism, so it's become very important to us to discover the purposes God has for our individual lives. Which is good. I believe God very much wants to connect with each of us on an individual, personal level, and that he has a specific story for each of us to tell within His greater Story of the world. But I also know that in Mary's day, within Jewish culture, the individual was not considered so important. Judaism is much more communal in its approach to God. So I can't know for sure, of course, but I get the impression that Mary wasn't overly concerned about her individual life. I imagine she was a simple Jewish girl, content to live an ordinary, day-to-day Jewish life. Furthermore - and here's the kicker for me - I bet what Mary was mainly concerned about was not her own life's story, but rather, living her life in obedience to her God. Simple as that.

Simple obedience. And according to Gabriel's salutation to her, that was enough to give her favor with God.

So, to wrap things up, I guess all I'm saying is that I was convicted today about not thinking of myself more highly than I ought. God does want to use me for great things, I'm convinced - and that's exciting beyond comprehension, but he doesn't need me. So I can stop stressing myself out about carpe-ing the diem. And I can start simply living. Obeying. And trusting that in that obedience to Him, my life will take on all the meaning and calling and purpose it was ever intended.

Trust and obey.

Trust and obey.

I seem to keep finding there's no other way.

Memory Lane

I was going through an old, forgotten file on my computer today and came across some pictures from my study abroad time in Argentina. A lot of them really took me back and made me smile, like this one of me playing with the children from my church's soup kitchen:

Or this one of Karin and me at Iguazu Falls:

Some of them even made me laugh out loud, like this pic of my friend Wendy, posing with the dancing empanadas:

And some pictures reminded me of the sadder, less amusing sights I saw while there:

I have to say, though, that I was most transported by the photographs of the estancia we visited in San Antonio de Areco. On a lawn encircled by stucco walled villas and fences crawling with flowering vines, tables were set up for us to eat lunch. The weather was warm, the air was sweet, and it was some of the best food of my life.

And after our almuerzo, we rode horses across endless prairie, guided by true gauchos.

The dreamer in me can't help but romanticise a place like that.

Maybe someday I'll go back. Or at least, set a story there.

Warning: This post is incredibly deep and meaningful. {Insert sarcasm here.}

So... sometimes after school Charlie and I play this game where we each draw a picture. There's only one major rule in this game - one of us contributes a subject and the other contributes a verb, and then both those things must appear in our drawings. For instance, I might say, "wind surfing", and Charlie might say, "Perry the Platypus", in which case, each of our drawings would have to include Perry the Platypus and windsurfing in some creative way.

Recently when we played this game, I contributed the subject of "Mario Bros". And, true to form, Charlie contributed the verb of "farting".

Here were the results:

First, Charlie's.

(I love how Bowser is on the right side, screaming, "Noooo!" to the SBD bomb Mario has just released.

I also love the spelling of "fart".)

Oh, little boys. Ha.

And this one was mine:

I know, not nearly as exciting.