This past weekend I went to a girl's conference. The speakers were Eric and Leslie Ludy, authors of quite a few books. Every one there was Protestant (except me, of course), which was kind of awkward when I crossed myself at meal times. I got a few funny looks, but it made me laugh. Anyway, I didn't understand why I had spent $130 on this conference. Friday night and most of Saturday I wasn't getting anything out of it. I didn't get anything out of it until two subejcts came up: prayer and missions work. The first subject, prayer, opened up a whole new world to me. They talked about the consistancy of praying. I'm a very rushed little girl. If I want something done, it needs to be immediately. I've prayed about serious matters quite lightly and infrequently to God, and yet I still wondered why He was taking so long. Um, duh, now I know. I wasn't pushing for it. I was expecting Him to answer me immediately, instead of taking my time to show Him how much I wanted a particular thing. These things consisted of my biological family becoming Catholic, my guardian being healed from her persistent illnesses, fincancial difficulty, ect. So, I began thinking about how I never have time to pray when Jesus decided to let me know that I DO have time, I just spend it unwisely on FACEBOOK. With that said, my Facebook is going to be exterminated. Good.

The second thing: missions work. A long while ago Jesus gave me a hint at what He wanted me to do with my life. It was this: "Love the world." For months all I could think about was loving the world, even though I had no idea what it meant. I even told my family that I wasn't interested in pursuing education or a career. They didn't agree with that, and told me my job was to obey them and that I was probably misunderstanding God's intentions. After that was said, I slowly waned from my pursuit of obeying God. Yesterday at the conference the girls were shown videos of orphaned children/child slaves. I finally understood what God meant when He said "love the world." I'm to go help those children. I'm to save those souls and bring them to Jesus. I'm to gather them in my arms and love them like they've never been loved before. Ugandan children are HUNTED at night. They walked up to 20 miles EACH NIGHT to escape being raped, abused, murdered, or tortured. They have no food. No home. No family. They are alone in this miserable world. I don't know where I'm supposed to go. I just know I need to go. These are very prime years right now. I'm going to be 18 soon, and will be able to do way more things that I've ever been able to do before. There's another young woman in Uganda right now. Her name is Katie. She is 21 years old and already has 14 adopted kids. THAT'S what I want. I've been wasting time dreaming about wedding gowns, and romantic kisses, and a beautiful home with lovely children, when across the world there are starving, beautiful children waiting to be kissed on the cheek by a tender mother.

Anyway, if you could pray for me in this area I would be so grateful. There is absolutely no way I can turn back to my daily life after having seen those videos. There was one video in which two 11 years were sold as slaves in less than 10 hours. TEN HOURS. They were ripped off the street and sold as prostitutes. Another video was about the story of a 21 year old girl who was sold as a prostitute slave. She was forced to have 15 men a day, otherwise she was beaten and starved. There must be something done to stop this!

I found my wedding dress. :)



These bridesmaid dresses are something I'm considering. I want my wedding to be sweet, simple, and elegant. I also want my husband to be sweet, simple, and elegant. Maybe not elegant. Suave. Boo yah.





Modest wedding dresses are so much more beautiful than your typical wedding dress. It's so cool how Jesus meant for women to cover themselves, and we look the best when we DO cover ourselves.

This is a quote from one of my history textbooks (I was studying about the women's rights movement):

"Some have tried to become semi-men by putting on the Bloomer dress. Let me tell you in a word why it can never be done. It is this: woman, robed and folded in her long dress, is beautiful. She walks gracefully...If she attemmps to run, the charm is gone. Take off the robes, and put on pants, and show the limbs, the grace and mystery are all gone."

I agree with this 100%. There IS a very particular grace and mystery when a woman is adorned in a dress (a modest one :). It's good to be a woman.

My current Facebook status:

Brittany Last-Name-Shall-Not-Be-Revealed-Due-To-Potential-Stalker-Issues has firmly decided that I am not going to be classified as "white" anymore. I am not white. Have you seen the color white? Yes, you have. Peeps, my homies, my shizzle wizzle dizzles, I am now going to be classified as "peach". Or perhaps "cream with a pink undertone". If I were truly white, then I would definitely have to go tanning. And I hate tanning. -_-

We're going to change the world, people. One fruit classification at a time.

Wait, cream isn't a fruit. Dude, word up, there's a problem. Darn it...

Ok, so I wrote in another location. But I just have to have you all pray for me this week. My piano teacher is having me do alot of practicing for the Christmas concert. (Or, maybe I have to do alot because I haven't been doing as much as I should have been...and I have to some cramming before the end...)anyway, say one more tiny prayer for your dear friend(who seems to have lost all of her great "committed, persevering" practicing skills this year. And who needs to find them before college....

Swans

The swan, like the soul of the poet, by the dull world is ill understood.~Heine



I love swans. I was just thinking about them today. Just look at them. They're gorgeous, graceful creatures. They look delicate, demure, and feminine.

Yet, lying dormant within them are reservoirs of titanic strength that they draw on to fly over 2000 miles.

That's strength. It's a beautiful sort of strength. A strong, quiet type of strength-shy, demure, quiet. Not brash, demanding attention, but simply doing what needs to be done without fuss or complaint. That's the kind of strong I strive/hope/wish/want to be.

And they mate for life.

True Love.


There's a double beauty whenever a swan swims on a lake with her double thereon. ~ Thomas Hood

Christmas Novena

Ha! I'm only a day late. This prayer is a tradition for my family (even though we've only been saying it for a few years; traditions have to start sometime ;-) ). Starting on the feast of St. Andrew (November 30), you recite this prayer 15 times a day until Christmas. Happy Advent!

Hail and blessed be the hour and moment in which the Son of God was born of the most pure Virgin Mary, at midnight, in Bethlehem, in piercing cold. In that hour, vouchsafe, O my God! to hear my prayer and grant my desires, through the merits of Our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of His Blessed Mother. Amen.

Warning: Finals Approaching

A short apology for not posting more frequently: I've been sick, there's always a load of homework, and no internet access over Thanksgiving being just a few of my excuses. And, with finals swiftly approaching in a week and a half, I probably won't be back to posting until I'm home over Christmas break.

That being said, I do have two projects in the works: a review of Pan's Labyrinth and my thoughts on Lord Peter Wimsey (preview: I love him!). They may even get posted earlier if I'm feeling rebellious and don't want to study my Harvey. I may even throw in my thoughts on The Barber of Seville (I'm going to see it on Sunday). You have been warned.

Movie Review

I found this review of the Passion of the Christ. It's almost 6 years old, but I aboslutely loved it. I just thought I'd post it-it's got some really great reflections on the film.

The Passion of the Christ


BY ROGER EBERT / February 24, 2004

If ever there was a film with the correct title, that film is Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ." Although the word passion has become mixed up with romance, its Latin origins refer to suffering and pain; later Christian theology broadened that to include Christ's love for mankind, which made him willing to suffer and die for us.

The movie is 126 minutes long, and I would guess that at least 100 of those minutes, maybe more, are concerned specifically and graphically with the details of the torture and death of Jesus. This is the most violent film I have ever seen.

I prefer to evaluate a film on the basis of what it intends to do, not on what I think it should have done. It is clear that Mel Gibson wanted to make graphic and inescapable the price that Jesus paid (as Christians believe) when he died for our sins. Anyone raised as a Catholic will be familiar with the stops along the way; the screenplay is inspired not so much by the Gospels as by the 14 Stations of the Cross. As an altar boy, serving during the Stations on Friday nights in Lent, I was encouraged to meditate on Christ's suffering, and I remember the chants as the priest led the way from one station to another:

At the Cross, her station keeping ...

Stood the mournful Mother weeping ...

Close to Jesus to the last.

For we altar boys, this was not necessarily a deep spiritual experience. Christ suffered, Christ died, Christ rose again, we were redeemed, and let's hope we can get home in time to watch the Illinois basketball game on TV. What Gibson has provided for me, for the first time in my life, is a visceral idea of what the Passion consisted of. That his film is superficial in terms of the surrounding message -- that we get only a few passing references to the teachings of Jesus -- is, I suppose, not the point. This is not a sermon or a homily, but a visualization of the central event in the Christian religion. Take it or leave it.

David Ansen, a critic I respect, finds in Newsweek that Gibson has gone too far. "The relentless gore is self-defeating," he writes. "Instead of being moved by Christ's suffering or awed by his sacrifice, I felt abused by a filmmaker intent on punishing an audience, for who knows what sins."

This is a completely valid response to the film, and I quote Ansen because I suspect he speaks for many audience members, who will enter the theater in a devout or spiritual mood and emerge deeply disturbed. You must be prepared for whippings, flayings, beatings, the crunch of bones, the agony of screams, the cruelty of the sadistic centurions, the rivulets of blood that crisscross every inch of Jesus' body. Some will leave before the end.

This is not a Passion like any other ever filmed. Perhaps that is the best reason for it. I grew up on those pious Hollywood biblical epics of the 1950s, which looked like holy cards brought to life. I remember my grin when Time magazine noted that Jeffrey Hunter, starring as Christ in "King of Kings" (1961), had shaved his armpits. (Not Hunter's fault; the film's Crucifixion scene had to be re-shot because preview audiences objected to Jesus' hairy chest.)

If it does nothing else, Gibson's film will break the tradition of turning Jesus and his disciples into neat, clean, well-barbered middle-class businessmen. They were poor men in a poor land. I debated Martin Scorsese's "The Last Temptation of Christ" with commentator Michael Medved before an audience from a Christian college, and was told by an audience member that the characters were filthy and needed haircuts.

The Middle East in biblical times was a Jewish community occupied against its will by the Roman Empire, and the message of Jesus was equally threatening to both sides: to the Romans, because he was a revolutionary, and to the establishment of Jewish priests, because he preached a new covenant and threatened the status quo.

In the movie's scenes showing Jesus being condemned to death, the two main players are Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, and Caiaphas, the Jewish high priest. Both men want to keep the lid on, and while neither is especially eager to see Jesus crucified, they live in a harsh time when such a man is dangerous.

Pilate is seen going through his well-known doubts before finally washing his hands of the matter and turning Jesus over to the priests, but Caiaphas, who also had doubts, is not seen as sympathetically. The critic Steven D. Greydanus, in a useful analysis of the film, writes: "The film omits the canonical line from John's gospel in which Caiaphas argues that it is better for one man to die for the people [so] that the nation be saved.

"Had Gibson retained this line, perhaps giving Caiaphas a measure of the inner conflict he gave to Pilate, it could have underscored the similarities between Caiaphas and Pilate and helped defuse the issue of anti-Semitism."

This scene and others might justifiably be cited by anyone concerned that the movie contains anti-Semitism. My own feeling is that Gibson's film is not anti-Semitic, but reflects a range of behavior on the part of its Jewish characters, on balance favorably. The Jews who seem to desire Jesus' death are in the priesthood, and have political as well as theological reasons for acting; like today's Catholic bishops who were slow to condemn abusive priests, Protestant TV preachers who confuse religion with politics, or Muslim clerics who are silent on terrorism, they have an investment in their positions and authority. The other Jews seen in the film are viewed positively; Simon helps Jesus to carry the cross, Veronica brings a cloth to wipe his face, Jews in the crowd cry out against his torture.

A reasonable person, I believe, will reflect that in this story set in a Jewish land, there are many characters with many motives, some good, some not, each one representing himself, none representing his religion. The story involves a Jew who tried no less than to replace the established religion and set himself up as the Messiah. He was understandably greeted with a jaundiced eye by the Jewish establishment while at the same time finding his support, his disciples and the founders of his church entirely among his fellow Jews. The libel that the Jews "killed Christ" involves a willful misreading of testament and teaching: Jesus was made man and came to Earth in order to suffer and die in reparation for our sins. No race, no man, no priest, no governor, no executioner killed Jesus; he died by God's will to fulfill his purpose, and with our sins we all killed him. That some Christian churches have historically been guilty of the sin of anti-Semitism is undeniable, but in committing it they violated their own beliefs.

This discussion will seem beside the point for readers who want to know about the movie, not the theology. But "The Passion of the Christ," more than any other film I can recall, depends upon theological considerations. Gibson has not made a movie that anyone would call "commercial," and if it grosses millions, that will not be because anyone was entertained. It is a personal message movie of the most radical kind, attempting to re-create events of personal urgency to Gibson. The filmmaker has put his artistry and fortune at the service of his conviction and belief, and that doesn't happen often.

Is the film "good" or "great?" I imagine each person's reaction (visceral, theological, artistic) will differ. I was moved by the depth of feeling, by the skill of the actors and technicians, by their desire to see this project through no matter what. To discuss individual performances, such as James Caviezel's heroic depiction of the ordeal, is almost beside the point. This isn't a movie about performances, although it has powerful ones, or about technique, although it is awesome, or about cinematography (although Caleb Deschanel paints with an artist's eye), or music (although John Debney supports the content without distracting from it).

It is a film about an idea. An idea that it is necessary to fully comprehend the Passion if Christianity is to make any sense. Gibson has communicated his idea with a singleminded urgency. Many will disagree. Some will agree, but be horrified by the graphic treatment. I myself am no longer religious in the sense that a long-ago altar boy thought he should be, but I can respond to the power of belief whether I agree or not, and when I find it in a film, I must respect it.




Note: I said the film is the most violent I have ever seen. It will probably be the most violent you have ever seen. This is not a criticism but an observation; the film is unsuitable for younger viewers, but works powerfully for those who can endure it. The MPAA's R rating is definitive proof that the organization either will never give the NC-17 rating for violence alone, or was intimidated by the subject matter. If it had been anyone other than Jesus up on that cross, I have a feeling that NC-17 would have been automatic.

Silence*

Edgar Lee Masters

I have known the silence of the stars and of the sea, And the silence of the city when it pauses, And the silence of a man and a maid, And the silence of the sick When their eyes roam about the room. And I ask: For the depths Of what use is language? A beast of the field moans a few times When death takes its young. And we are voiceless in the presence of realities - We cannot speak. A curious boy asks an old soldier Sitting in front of the grocery store, "How did you lose your leg?" And the old soldier is struck with silence, Or his mind flies away Because he cannot concentrate it on Gettysburg, It comes back jocosely And he says, "A bear bit it off." And the boy wonders, while the old soldier Dumbly, feebly lives over The flashes of guns, the thunder of cannon, The shrieks of the slain, And himself lying on the ground, And the hospital surgeons, the knives, And the long days in bed. But if he could describe it all He would be an artist. But if he were an artist there would be deeper wounds Which he could not describe. There is the silence of a great hatred, And the silence of a great love, And the silence of an embittered friendship. There is the silence of a spiritual crisis, Through which your soul, exquisitely tortured, Comes with visions not to be uttered Into a realm of higher life. There is the silence of defeat. There is the silence of those unjustly punished And the silence of the dying whose hand Suddenly grips yours. There is the silence between father and son, When the father cannot explain his life, Even though he be misunderstood for it. There is the silence that comes between husband and wife. There is the silence of those who have failed; And the vast silence that covers Broken nations and vanquished leaders. There is the silence of Lincoln, Thinking of the poverty of his youth. And the silence of Napoleon After Waterloo. And the silence of Jeanne d'Arc Saying amid the flames, "Blessed Jesus" - Revealing in two words all sorrows, all hope. And there is the silence of age, Too full of wisdom for the tongue to utter it In words intelligible to those who have not lived The great range of life. And there is the silence of the dead. If we who are in life cannot speak Of profound experiences, Why do you marvel that the dead Do not tell you of death? Their silence shall be interpreted As we approach them.

This is one of my favorite poems. I think it covers every aspect of life in one page. Word up!

Here Comes the Bride...

Click on dress for full view.

Mori Lee has the most beautiful wedding dresses I've ever seen. I saw this exact dress at the Chapel of Love at MOA on the Friday after Thanksgiving(I don't really like calling it Black Friday for some reason, so we'll just call it what it is: the Friday after Thanksgiving).

And I may or may not have let out a shriek of delight and joy when I saw this dress.

I may have gasped out of sheer wonder and awe.

Then again I may not have.

The truth remains shrouded in mystery and mysteriousness.

But what I definitely did do was make my friend from work (who I was wandering about with; she was looking for a hard drive from Best Buy-but we ended up finding my future wedding dress. A happy tradeoff? I think yes.) stop for a good couple of minutes and admire the dress while I took a picture-it was with my phone, so it wasn't a very good picture. But, then I snooped about on the Chapel of Love website, and I found the dress!


Sidebar: Who on earth would want to get married in the Mall of America??????

Just sayin'.


But, anyhow, I just wanted to show you my wedding dress! Because it officially is going to be my wedding dress. No, I'm not planning on getting married anytime in the near future. But, as my Boy Scout brother would say: Be Prepared.

I'm Eighteen.

Clocks are ticking.

Bridesmaids' dresses, anyone? ;)