Posts Tagged ‘donald miller’
Things I Like [7]
Posted on: September 23, 2011
I love reading. I don’t do it as often as I should, but I love getting lost in a story, fiction or non-fiction…I love reading people’s stories. I prefer story books, whether you are telling me someone else’s story or your own. I don’t so much like self-help books or teaching books.
Anyway, my top 3 books: (click on pic to find out more about the book)
The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborn
The Shack by William Young
Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller
(first 44 pages of blue like jazz available to read online)
Some authors I really dig:
Stephen King (IT, Carrie, The Shining, etc - fiction, horror)
John Grisham (An Innocent Man, The Client, The Firm, The Pelican Brief, etc - fiction, law)
Jeff Lucas (Lucas out Loud, Lucas on Life, How not to pray, Grace choices) - humour, christianity
Thoughts on singleness revisited
Posted on: February 1, 2011
- In: my life | thoughts
- 4 Comments
“want to find romance? commit to asking a girl out once a week (talk to henry cloud if you think that’s too much) or, if you’re a girl, put yourself on a dating site on the internet and say yes when you get asked out” – don miller
i read that and thought “don, are you out of your mind?”.
i then posted it as my facebook status and got the following comment from val (of tbv fame): “a couple of months before starting to go out with brett i decided that i was actually going to start saying ‘yes’ to dates – even if i thought it really wouldn’t work or i wouldn’t enjoy it…it was good for me to a. start giving guys chances, b. get over the fear of awkwardness on a date, c. realise that a date was not saying i wanted to marry the guy (i.e. i kissed dating hello!) i did go on some very awkward dates and had some times of literally having nothing to say to each other, and said yes to what i thought were dates but later turned out not to be and that was hard and dissapointing and i got hurt…BUT, when brett asked me out, i said yes even though a couple months before i would have said no because 1. he was way older and 2. i was nervous. and that didn’t turn out too badly”
and for those who don’t know them, when she says “didn’t turn out too badly” she means “we ended up getting married and being all happy and couply and making T think ‘aw, i want that’”… 
my friend Andy then commented “I definitely agree with Don Miller! It makes sense. To find ‘romance’ one needs to be in contact with members of the other sex, and that’s not going to happen if you shut yourself off from meeting those members.” and seeing that Andy has been in a relationship for like, i don’t know, 10 years with her boyfriend – including a year of long distance – i think she probably knows what she’s talking about when it comes to relationships.
3 short months ago, i wrote this post. and i meant every word of what i said. even that part with all the senarios which lead me to hate being single. what i failed to mention was that i was totally thinking of a specific person when i wrote those. so yea, i was, and am still, in this weird “i love being single but…” mode because of him.
anyway, in blue like jazz – which i absolutely loved! – don miller says something like (i’m too lazy to get the book so i’ll just paraphrase) “if you like a girl you should let her know. even if she doesn’t feel the same way, you’ll never regret stepping up. i’ve also learned that if the girl says she doesn’t like you back you should stop riding your bike past her house”. lol. anyway, does that apply to girls as well? if you like a boy, should you let him know? i’m not saying ask the guy out, just, you know, let him know that you are interested, and if he’s also interested then his interest would be welcome…or something…
so, should i tell the guy? or should i just sign up for an internet dating site?
living with strangers
Posted on: November 30, 2010
- In: blog carnival | my life
- 4 Comments
they say to watch the company you keep because you tend to become them or something. i always try to surround myself with good people, and i think i’ve done very well so far. god has brought some super awesome people into my life.
sometime this year i was going through some hectic spiritual stuff – lots of doubt, which i’d never really experienced before – so it was really scary, but the people from church helped me through it.
str
a few years ago i read donald miller’s blue like jazz and shane claiborne’s irresistible revolution and fell in love with the idea of living in community. i decided then that i didn’t want to live alone anymore – at that point i was living in a batchelor flat all by my lonesome. anyway, the following year i moved in with my friend lindri and that was really good. i think i needed that transition of moving in with just one person first to get me out of my “bubble” space mentality…and it was a really huge bubble. anyway, by the end of the year i was so used to lindri coming to my door all the time to talk that i’d so miss it when she wasn’t around. i got to a point where i didn’t just put up with being around people but i actually wanted and craved to be around other people.
the next year i moved in with 2 strangers. even more growth. atleast with lindri we’d been friends before we moved in together so i kinda knew what to expect but with these new flatmates i knew nothing. i only met them once i’d already moved in. and although there were some disagreements here and there – mostly about housekeeping: washing the dishes, cleaning the bathroom, etc etc – it was a really cool group of people so it all worked out in the end.
i just moved into a new house last week that i will be sharing with 4 other people – eek. 4 stragers. i lucked out though because they all seem like genuinely great people and we get along quite well. i actually went away with one of them this past weekend – after only knowing her for a week – to a music festival…she’s also a fan of music and dancing – yayness!
i think my biggest problem this year is going to be being farther away from my church people, especially since my flatmates aren’t Christians. i think i took that for granted while i had it. lind would always come to my room when she got something new from the bible and share it with me and we’d have hectic chats on the Bible and God and pray for each other and stuff. and last year, while that didn’t happen, knowing that my flatmates where Christians and being close to my friends whom i could always call on for coffee and a chat when i was feeling down or whatever was really encouraging.
i think church attendance and cell group are going to play an even bigger role in my life next year. i’m gonna be more dependent on that christian fellowship. and i’m gonna try to remember not to take it for granted but to really appreciiate it.
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this post was written for the one word at a time blog carnival. this week’s theme is “fellowship”. Click here to read other posts from some awesome bloggers.
C. S. Lewis
Posted on: November 12, 2010
- In: from others
- 1 Comment
All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through;
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.
Peace, reassurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin;
I talk of love – a scholar’s parrot may talk Greek -
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.
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This is a poem by C. S. Lewis…don’t know the name. Came across it in Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz. I love it…and hate it…cos it rings too true. Do I really believe the things I say? Or like a parrot, do I simply just regurgitate the things I’ve heard?
Hello My name is Lucy
Posted on: July 9, 2010
“I know now that was the day I was picked and being picked is a beautiful thing. But I also know beautiful things are frightening. When something beautiful happens it’s sometimes like an amputation, like your heart is being cut out with a knife. You don’t ever think when you are in extreme pain that you are being saved, chosen, picked for relationship, set aside to be loved. You can never really believe pain. It’s almost always something beautiful transitioning to something better, the whole time masquerading as a tragedy.”
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just had to share that little bit…really liked it, don’t know why.
anyway, you can read the rest of the article here. it is written by Donald Miller’s dog, Lucy. she’s guest posting for him a little while.
To Write Love On Her Arms
Posted on: November 13, 2009
Today is international twloha day…basically to show your support for this cause you just write the word love on your arm for the day…whe people ask you why, you tell them this story:
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Friday, April 18, 2008
READ THE STORY HERE.
TO WRITE LOVE ON HER ARMS.
by jamie tworkowski
Pedro the Lion is loud in the speakers, and the city waits just outside our open windows. She sits and sings, legs crossed in the passenger seat, her pretty voice hiding in the volume. Music is a safe place and Pedro is her favorite. It hits me that she won’t see this skyline for several weeks, and we will be without her. I lean forward, knowing this will be written, and I ask what she’d say if her story had an audience. She smiles. “Tell them to look up. Tell them to remember the stars.”
I would rather write her a song, because songs don’t wait to resolve, and because songs mean so much to her. Stories wait for endings, but songs are brave things bold enough to sing when all they know is darkness. These words, like most words, will be written next to midnight, between hurricane and harbor, as both claim to save her.
Renee is 19. When I meet her, cocaine is fresh in her system. She hasn’t slept in 36 hours and she won’t for another 24. It is a familiar blur of coke, pot, pills and alcohol. She has agreed to meet us, to listen and to let us pray. We ask Renee to come with us, to leave this broken night. She says she’ll go to rehab tomorrow, but she isn’t ready now. It is too great a change. We pray and say goodbye and it is hard to leave without her.
She has known such great pain; haunted dreams as a child, the near-constant presence of evil ever since. She has felt the touch of awful naked men, battled depression and addiction, and attempted suicide. Her arms remember razor blades, fifty scars that speak of self-inflicted wounds. Six hours after I meet her, she is feeling trapped, two groups of “friends” offering opposite ideas. Everyone is asleep. The sun is rising. She drinks long from a bottle of liquor, takes a razor blade from the table and locks herself in the bathroom. She cuts herself, using the blade to write “FUCK UP” large across her left forearm.
The nurse at the treatment center finds the wound several hours later. The center has no detox, names her too great a risk, and does not accept her. For the next five days, she is ours to love. We become her hospital and the possibility of healing fills our living room with life. It is unspoken and there are only a few of us, but we will be her church, the body of Christ coming alive to meet her needs, to write love on her arms.
She is full of contrast, more alive and closer to death than anyone I’ve known, like a Johnny Cash song or some theatre star. She owns attitude and humor beyond her 19 years, and when she tells me her story, she is humble and quiet and kind, shaped by the pain of a hundred lifetimes. I sit privileged but breaking as she shares. Her life has been so dark yet there is some soft hope in her words, and on consecutive evenings, I watch the prettiest girls in the room tell her that she’s beautiful. I think it’s God reminding her.
I’ve never walked this road, but I decide that if we’re going to run a five-day rehab, it is going to be the coolest in the country. It is going to be rock and roll. We start with the basics; lots of fun, too much Starbucks and way too many cigarettes.
Thursday night she is in the balcony for Band Marino, Orlando’s finest. They are indie-folk-fabulous, a movement disguised as a circus. She loves them and she smiles when I point out the A&R man from Atlantic Europe, in town from London just to catch this show.
She is in good seats when the Magic beat the Sonics the next night, screaming like a lifelong fan with every Dwight Howard dunk. On the way home, we stop for more coffee and books, Blue Like Jazz and (Anne Lamott’s) Travelling Mercies.
On Saturday, the Taste of Chaos tour is in town and I’m not even sure we can get in, but doors do open and minutes after parking, we are on stage for Thrice, one of her favorite bands. She stands ten feet from the drummer, smiling constantly. It is a bright moment there in the music, as light and rain collide above the stage. It feels like healing. It is certainly hope.
Sunday night is church and many gather after the service to pray for Renee, this her last night before entering rehab. Some are strangers but all are friends tonight. The prayers move from broken to bold, all encouraging. We’re talking to God but I think as much, we’re talking to her, telling her she’s loved, saying she does not go alone. One among us knows her best. Ryan sits in the corner strumming an acoustic guitar, singing songs she’s inspired.
After church our house fills with friends, there for a few more moments before goodbye. Everyone has some gift for her, some note or hug or piece of encouragement. She pulls me aside and tells me she would like to give me something. I smile surprised, wondering what it could be. We walk through the crowded living room, to the garage and her stuff.
She hands me her last razor blade, tells me it is the one she used to cut her arm and her last lines of cocaine five nights before. She’s had it with her ever since, shares that tonight will be the hardest night and she shouldn’t have it. I hold it carefully, thank her and know instantly that this moment, this gift, will stay with me. It hits me to wonder if this great feeling is what Christ knows when we surrender our broken hearts, when we trade death for life.
As we arrive at the treatment center, she finishes: “The stars are always there but we miss them in the dirt and clouds. We miss them in the storms. Tell them to remember hope. We have hope.”
I have watched life come back to her, and it has been a privilege. When our time with her began, someone suggested shifts but that is the language of business. Love is something better. I have been challenged and changed, reminded that love is that simple answer to so many of our hardest questions. Don Miller says we’re called to hold our hands against the wounds of a broken world, to stop the bleeding. I agree so greatly.
We often ask God to show up. We pray prayers of rescue. Perhaps God would ask us to be that rescue, to be His body, to move for things that matter. He is not invisible when we come alive. I might be simple but more and more, I believe God works in love, speaks in love, is revealed in our love. I have seen that this week and honestly, it has been simple: Take a broken girl, treat her like a famous princess, give her the best seats in the house. Buy her coffee and cigarettes for the coming down, books and bathroom things for the days ahead. Tell her something true when all she’s known are lies. Tell her God loves her. Tell her about forgiveness, the possibility of freedom, tell her she was made to dance in white dresses. All these things are true.
We are only asked to love, to offer hope to the many hopeless. We don’t get to choose all the endings, but we are asked to play the rescuers. We won’t solve all mysteries and our hearts will certainly break in such a vulnerable life, but it is the best way. We were made to be lovers bold in broken places, pouring ourselves out again and again until we’re called home.
I have learned so much in one week with one brave girl. She is alive now, in the patience and safety of rehab, covered in marks of madness but choosing to believe that God makes things new, that He meant hope and healing in the stars. She would ask you to remember.
Currently listening:
Nothing Left to Lose
By Mat Kearney
Release date: 18 April, 2006
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[copied from http://www.myspace.com/towriteloveonherarms blog]
Just not good enough!
Posted on: November 20, 2008
my new obsession: one tree hill (tv series)
my fave character: brooke davis
fave line from brooke: (a guy comes to sit next to her in a bar, he smile, she smirks, he offers to buy her a drink, she replies) Okay, guy in need of a clue. Here’s one. Women send signals. That was a brush off. Before you dip into your shallow pool of wit let me paint us a picture and save us both the trouble. Here’s your evening. You are going to slink back off to your buddies, laugh this off, get wasted, go home, and make nice with yourself. But don’t be thinking of me, because even your fantasy of me, isn’t interested in you.
another line I like from Lucas: (opening line of his best-man speech) Remember tonight, for it is the beginning of always.
but that’s not what this post is about.
Last night I watched I think episode 13 or 14 of season 4. And well Brooke is interested in this guy and she lies to get him to go out with her and when he asks her why she lied she says she was afraid she wouldn’t be good enough for him. If you haven’t seen the show, let me fill you in. Brooke is an 18 year old high school student. She in her matric/senior year and she’s pretty much the most popular girl on campus – captain of the varsity cheerleading team, student president, voted prom queen, prettiest girl on campus, owns her own clothing label (clothes over bros), just pretty much rules her school.
And her biggest fear is that she is not good enough – not pretty enough, not smart enough, not talented enough; just not enough.
She figures she’s not enough because her parents never let her know that she is.
I was reading the book “to own a dragon” by Donald Miller (brilliant author) and he was talking about how he kinda went through the same thing. He grew up without a father, and so not knowing what a man is, he went through life thinking he’s not man enough. He went on to talk about ex-President of the USA Eisenhower and how Eisenhower’s parents instilled in him from a young age just how much he was wanted and loved and needed by his parents which led him to have a great self-image and therefore gave him that “i am enough” feel and led him to great things. If his parents never let him know he’s good enough, maybe he would have never been a president.
My biggest fear is that I am not good enough.
I’m scared that at some point everyone is going to see the real me and leave me. I’m scared that my friends are seeing what they want to see and not what’s really there, and as soon as they see the real me they won’t be so keen to be my friends (I don’t get people who want to be friends with me cos I really wouldn’t want to be friends with me). So, I don’t open up…I keep to myself; cos opening up means being vulnerable…and when they do leave it’s going to jurt that much more. I don’t speak up, cos what I have to say is not good enough. I don’t sing out loud, cos my voice is not good enough. I don’t let myself fall in love, cos I’m not good enough for the guy. I’m just not enough!
I’m so so so glad that God doesn’t expect me to be good enough!
So once again this is not about this…this is really about that (read SexGod by Rob Bell and you’ll understand)
In closing, my fave line from the show (and a comment made by someone on some one tree hill blog or something)
Peyton (voice over): At this moment, there are 6,470,818,671 people in the world. Some are running scared. Some are coming home. Some tell lies to make it through the day. Others are just now facing the truth. Some are evil men, that war with good. And some are good, struggling with evil. 6 billion people in the world. 6 billion souls. And sometimes, all you need is one.
comment: “I can’t stop thinking, if there are over six billion people in the world what says you’ll ever find the one your meant to be with. I must also think why her, why now, why ever?
And if I ever get her, will I still wonder why not him? Why isn’t he perfect for her?”
one last quote from…I think it was someone in my SexGod cell group: “Out of the 6 billion people on this earth, I chose not to be gay (that cuts out half of the population) and not to date long-distance (that leaves everyone in this city) and not to date someone too old or too young…someone around my age (that leaves about 2000 people) and to date someone I actually know…or at least interact with in my world (that leaves about 100 people)…and out of all of them, I chose you!” — romantic hey?! From 6 mil to 100.
