warning: this blog is completely useless

I am a posting machine. I am a blogging wonder. 2 posts in 2 days.

I decided not to write about my back. Not that it didn't happen--it's just not very interesting. It hurt and I couldn't move, and now it still hurts a little bit but I can move. Oh, and when I nod my head, I can feel a muscle pulling in my....um..."extreme lower back." Funny, but not enough for an entire blog.

Instead, I'm going to copy my roommate Victoria, who wrote 20 random facts about herself that no one really knew. Sure, it's a little egocentric, but hey--you wouldn't be here unless you wanted to read something. Here goes:

1) Every time I'm in the ocean, I'm constantly scanning the surface for fins, even when I look like I'm relaxed.

2) One of my favorite smells in the world is dead leaves in Autumn (unless they're wet)

3) My least favorite smell is purple. It is the nastiest smell ever.

4) I found out a few months ago that I have spelled the word wierd wrong for my entire life. I just did it again. I have decided that is how I spell wierd and I refuse to change it.

5) Once, I forgot I was in public and burped out loud on the escalator in the Metro in Madrid.

6) I think licorice is the nastiest creation ever. Oddly enough, it doesn't smell purple.

7) My pinkie toes kind of stick up--so when I walk on the beach, my footprints only have 4 toes.

8) I laugh at my own jokes even when no one is around.

9) When I was 16, I hit the fencepost at my house and didn't tell anyone because I had just rearended a truck a week earlier, and I was afraid they would think I was a bad driver. Looking back, I think I might actually have been a bad driver. The fencepost was at a 45 degree angle to the ground.

10) Today I tried on some of those wierd mid-calf skort pants things, and I liked them.

11) I have a long list of people I can't sit next to in church because they make me laugh. For the past few weeks, a new person has been added each week. Maybe I'm the problem.

12) I would rather read than watch TV. But somehow, I end up watching TV anyway.

13) When I was a kid and I would play computer games, I would imagine myself in a huge international tournament, with announcers on TV commenting on how awesome my strategy is. I sometimes still do that when I play Text Twist. But only when I'm really sleepy.

14) I played basketball in 6th and 7th grade. I got a total of about 10 minutes of playing time in 2 years.

15) Of all the things from college that I miss, I miss ultimate frisbee the most.

16) My mom and I compete to see who knows the most words. If we're only counting English, I think she wins, but I would never admit it except on a blog.

17) I enjoy stream of consciousness writing just for the heck of it. I also enjoy stream of consciousness thinking and talking, which might or might not drive others crazy. If you've made it this far in the blog, you are not one of those people.

18) I can type somewhere between 60 and 75 words a minute if I'm not capitalizing or punctuating, which makes it an absolutely useless skill.

19) Once, in 7th grade, I passed out from sucking the helium out of too many baloons at a football game.

20) Once I cried while watching Michelle Kwan skate, because it was just so beautiful. And then I got really embarrassed and was glad no one was around.

Don't worry, you'll probably hear all these stories again--I tend to be a "story repeater." Just tell me you've heard it so I don't have to say it again, and we'll move on.

"The Vision" by Pete Greig

Eventually, I will post something--I know I've been a slacker. Someday soon, I'll tell the story about how my back just decided to stop working on Tuesday and how I've been whining to myself, saying things like "I'm not old enough to throw my back out!"

But all this is for another day.

For today, I've had this poem in my head that I love (if you can call it a poem--prophecy maybe?) by Pete Greig, that he wrote when someone asked him what was the vision of 24-7. (Basically, it's a movement of 24-7 prayer, but you need to check this out. For more info about them, click the title of the blog--it links to the 24-7 website). While he was in a prayer room, this is the answer that ended up on paper....I love it. It gets me all excited, for Europe, for my generation, for God. I want to be one of these people in this poem.

Anyway, I don't want to ruin it with my thoughts, so here it is:

So this guy comes up to me and says, "What's the vision? What's the big idea?" I open my mouth and words come out like this...

The vision?
The vision is JESUS:
obsessively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus.

The vision is an army of young people.
You see bones?
I see an army.

And they are FREE from materialism -
they laugh at 9-5 little prisons.
They could eat caviar on Monday and crusts on Tuesday. They wouldn't even notice.
They know the meaning of the Matrix,
the way the West was won.

They are mobile like the wind,
they belong to the nations,
they need no passport.
People write their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence.
They are free,
yet they are slaves
of the hurting and dirty and dying.

What is the vision? The vision is holiness that hurts the eyes.
It makes children laugh and adults angry.
It gave up the game of minimum integrity long ago to reach for the stars.
It scorns the good and strains for the best.
It is dangerously pure.

Light flickers
from every secret motive,
every private conversation.
It loves people away from their suicide leaps,
their Satan games.

This is an army
that will lay down its life for the cause.
A million times a day
its soldiers choose to loose that they might one day win the great "Well done" of faithful sons and daughters.

Such heroes are as radical on Monday morning as Sunday night.

They don't need fame from names.
Instead they grin quietly upwards
and hear the crowds chanting again and again:
"COME ON!"

And this is the sound of the underground,
the whisper of history in the making,
foundations shaking,
revolutionaries dreaming once again.
Mystery is scheming in whispers,
conspiracy is breathing...
This is the sound of the underground

And the army is discipl(in)ed -
young people who beat their bodies into submission.
Every soldier would take a bullet for his comrade at arms.
The tattoo on their back boasts
"For me to live is Christ and to die is gain."

Sacrifice fuels the fire
of victory in their upward eyes.
Winners.
Martyrs.
Who can stop them? Can hormones hold them back? Can failure succeed? Can fear scare them or death kill them?

And the generation prays
like a dying man with groans beyond talking,
with warrior cries, sulphuric tears and great barrow loads of laughter!

Waiting.
Watching:
24 - 7 - 365.

Whatever it takes they will give:
Breaking the rules,
shaking mediocrity from its cosy little hide,
laying down their rights and their precious little wrongs,
laughing at labels,
fasting essentials.
The advertisers cannot mold them.
Hollywood cannot hold them.
Peer-pressure is powerless
to shake their resolve
at late night parties
before the cockerel cries.

They are incredibly cool,
dangerously attractive inside.
On the outside? They hardly care!
They wear clothes like costumes: to communicate and celebrate,
but never to hide.

Would they surrender their image or their popularity? They would lay down their very lives, swap seats with the man on death row, guilty as hell:
a throne for an electric chair.

With blood and sweat and many tears,
with sleepless nights and fruitless days,
they pray as if it all depends on God
and live as if it all depends on them.

Their DNA chooses JESUS.
(He breathes out, they breathe in.)
Their subconscious sings.
They had a blood transfusion with Jesus.

Their words make demons scream in shopping centres.
Don't you hear them coming?

Herald the weirdos!
Summon the losers and the freaks.
Here come the frightened and forgotten
with fire in their eyes!
They walk tall and trees applaud,
skyscrapers bow,
mountains are dwarfed
by these children of another dimension.

Their prayers summon the Hound of Heaven and invoke the ancient dream of Eden.

And this vision will be.
It will come to pass;
it will come easily;
it will come soon.

How do I know?
Because this is the longing of creation itself,
the groaning of the Spirit,
the very dream of God.

My tomorrow is His today.
My distant hope is His 3-D.
And my feeble,
whispered,
faithless prayer
invokes a thunderous,
resounding,
bone-shaking
great "Amen!"
from countless angels,
from hero's of the faith,
from Christ himself.

And He is the original dreamer,
the ultimate winner.
Guaranteed.