burning like matchsticks in the face of the darkness

On Friday I posted a link to "We Are Young" by Fun, featuring ft. Janelle Monáe to facebook, saying, "I don't really love this video, but the chorus has been recurrently playing in my brain for some time. (Happy almost Pentecost?)"

We are young / so let's set the world on fire...

It felt too warm today for a long-sleeved shirt, and I don't love the one short-sleeved red shirt I have (plus, I'd rather be wearing a red shirt with black pants, but my weekend usual is blue jeans) so I decided to wear my red dress* and maroon tights ... and I wasn't wearing my rainbow Pride heels** to bicycle, so I wore my black ~Vans with the ~glow-in-the-dark stars on them (they're not actually Vans, they're just laceup flats in that style -- they were on like closeout sale at Berks for $10/pair or something).
*When not worn with black knee-high boots with ~3-inch heels, this dress totally doesn't feel like a hooker dress. [No one has ever called it a hooker dress to me, I just frequently think of it as such, b/c of aforementioned footwear pairing.]
**I got an Urban Outfitters email this afternoon which included these shoes [Jeffrey Campbell Rainbow Starlight Eva Sandal marked down to $99 from $139].

***

(from the FCS bulletin this morning)

Unison Prayer of Confession

God,

We confess that we find Christmas and Easter more exciting than the urgency of Pentecost.
We confess that our worst nightmare is sounding drunk or folish.
We confess that this birthday-church isn't always a party.
We confess that we rarely listen to the speakers of other languages, and almost never try to learn their words ourselves.
Holy One, we are heart-cut and frightened by strong winds.
Make us new, and ready for Your Holy Spirit. Amen.

-Maren Tirabassi, adapted

+

Meditation [a longer piece was printed in the bulletin]

I believe the church can have an integral role in the development of the self, but also of the self in covenantal relation to others. I believe the church should always adapt and change and grow with each person; in other words, to a certain degree, when a person becomes a part of a church community, that church should never be quite the same as it was. And as change happens to the church, I should change, too. I want church to help me to be me, to help me figure out what that means as a child pf God, and to help me figure out what that means as a citizen of God's green earth with neighbors all about. I want church to help me to understand what it is to be loved, to feel loved, and to love. I want church to help me to recognize God around me and others, to see God at work in and through me, to assure me of my place in God's grace.

-from Rev. Kaji Spellman, Yale Divinity School Reflections Fall 2009

***

"Joy Sadhana is a daily practice in the observation of joy."
-mylittleredgirl [more info]

And those chapters, again, must be read in the context of the entire book of Acts, which begins with Pentecost — bringing together people “from every nation under heaven … Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to the Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs” — and continues inexorably outward to include and embrace European tradeswomen and African eunuchs and anyone else the author can imagine the reader otherwise being tempted to exclude or reject. The book reads like an after-school special on celebrating diversity.
-slacktivist

( Read more... )