"The Trip was to be an Odyssey in the fullest sense of the word, an epic journey that would change everything. He had spent the four previous years, as he saw it, preparing to fulfill an absurd and onerous duty: to graduate from college. At long last he was unencumbered, emancipated from the stifling world of his parents and peers, a world of abstraction and security and material excess, a world in which he felt grievously cut off from the raw throb of existence. He intended to invent an utterly new life for himself, one in which he would be free to wallow in unfiltered experience." -Into The Wild, by Jon Krakauer.

This quote is speaking of a guy named Chris McCandless (self-named Alex Supertramp), who I have recently added to my list of heroes. After he graduated from college, he took off in his car, and when it died, on foot, just to traipse around. To tramp the continent. He canoed to Mexico! He had great experiences (as well as near-death ones), and lived with nature, as a part of nature. Unfortunately, he died in 1992, but I still think most highly of him. He was tough, peace-loving, and a little out-there, like John the Baptist, Nelson Mandela or Mother Teresa. I like people like that. I hope to be a person like that.

"In reality, there is nothing more damaging to the adventorous spirit within a man than a secure future....The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun." -Alex Supertramp

Just thought I'd share one man's story that has truly inspired me to find a new and different sun every day!

People ask me what college I'm going to after high school.
They don't ask me what I want to do with my life.
They ask what college.
It's as if college is the object, not the life to be lived after it.
I don't understand.

People ask why I'm not just going for an art major.
As if that wouldn't be the easy thing.
They try and get their ideas for me in.
Make the things I'm considering seem less suitable.
This life has been given to me, not to them.
Lord love them,
He knows I do.
It's just hard to deal with people's assumptions for me when I'm dealing with 750 other things. Most unpleasant.

I want to go on a week long canoe trip.
I want to jump on a trampoline.
I want to swim the English channel, climb Mt. Everest, write a book.
I want to rescue little Albanian boys and girls from terrible, lifelong sex slavery.
I want to skinny dip in the Pacific, and splatter paint a house.
I long to take the hippie trail. From Europe to India;
From India to Nepal,
Back to Europe.

Even though I long to be free of the constraints put upon me by others,
by society in general,
I've gotta chill out.
I must breathe in.
And then out.
Drive the car a little bit to fast
with the music to loud.
Waiting on time
To carry me to freedom.
This is my life.
Now is the most important moment.
I don't want to waste it.





Lydia


Like a south bound train
Here's a song for leavin.
Don't you know that pain,
It's a part of the healin.

I'm home. Back from New York City, and slowing getting used to being at home and being back in my home routine. It's hard. I don't feel like I should be back. It seems like it's not right for me to be back and getting back to "life." But at the same time does feel good to be back. My heat is torn and my life has been wrecked, but that's only because of God. God's allowed me to be vulnerable, and allowed my heart to be changed. I've seen the change start, and I've seen Him change everything. My life's been put upside down, and I'm so excited to see where else He's going to take me.

Brianna

Tomorrow I'm headed for New York City. I'll be gone for 2 weeks.

This experience I know will be wonderful...truth be told I have no idea what to expect and a little nervous--but I'm excited. Prayers please!

See you in 2 weeks!


Brianna

In India,
of every 1,000 babies born alive, 52 die before age 1,
nearly half the children younger than 5 are malnourished,
every year, 1.5 million children die before their 5th birthday because of unsafe water, inadequate sanitation, or poor hygiene,
30% of adult women are underweight,
70% of women can't read or write,
nearly 30% of all newborns have a low weight,
and about 46% of all children younger than 3 are small for their age.

Around the world,
every sixth child (ages 15-17) is engaged in child labour (218 million),
22,000 children die yearly in work-related accidents,
and 8.4 million children are trapped in slavery, trafficking, debt, bondage, prostitution, and pornography.

Every country and developing country harbours abusive child labour in some form.

Some of that is from Unicef, some of it is from Compassion International. Doubt the statistics if you want, but who would make all this up?

Keep your eyes open. Look for ways to make the world a better place. Love more. Share more. Change the world more.




Lydia

This post is for the people who don't have water, who don't have work, who don't have hope. This one goes to the children whose parents love them, and to those whose parents abandoned them. In this post, I ache for everyone who has died, and for everyone who longs to die. I cry for the pain of the lonely child, and I sob for the hungry. Here I wish luck to the Hispanics applying for permission to enter the land of oppurtunity so that they can obtain a job that will enable them to feed their family. What a stark contrast there is between those who celebrate life, and those who celebrate death.
I question Bali and the Caribbean islands as they contradict their own beauty with poverty suffered by multitudes. How can Mexico City be so beautiful, and so dirty?
Oh! the beauty of the Indian celebration, oh! the cruelty of the Calcutta red light district. Look at the colourful African plain, look at the war-torn farm land. I love the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, but it hurts to hear that children live on streets in the neighbouring metropolis. How horrible to know that someone has choked to death in a country full of air filters and fast-acting asthma medication. I utter a sad cry for the people who feel left behind, and lost in a crowd.
Here I raise my banner high, as a rebel refusing to submit to the cruelty of this planet. I refuse to let it be. I don't like seeing others suffer, I don't like knowing that they do. I hate to hear of those who refuse to take the hand offered them.There is so much beauty, but there is so much hurt. I long to see it all changed; I long to belong. What a glory to know that soon there will be a new time when nothing is wrong, and nothing is perverted. The truth which is the answer to the pain has been revealed-it has all been said. The real problem is that so many of us refuse to listen.
This one is for those who have yet to hear, but are ready to believe.



Lydia

I'm in quite the funk. That's not quite the right phrase, but it will have to do.

I've been thinking a lot about life in the future lately. This is prompted quite a bit by my parents and my own general need to know what I'm going to do with my life. Most people probably would say now is the best time to be thinking about it. I like thinking about what I want to do with my life. Or should I say, I used to enjoy that. Now, at this point in my life, it seems like whatever I choose, determines how my life plays out. That scares me beyond imagination. I don't know what I want for my life anymore.

I'm scared that if I go to college right after high school (which is the "right" thing to do), I'll never be able to travel, do the things I've dreamed of, and really live. I'm terrified of living an "average" life the rest of my life. I don't mean that living a life much like average Americans is aweful...I just don't have a desire for that anymore.

I so badly want to go and be on my own in a place where I know no one or know very few people. I want to dive head on into different cultures. I want to experience life.

I want to go and share the love of Christ with people.

I don't want to be here.

I don't know how to do this. I don't even know where I want to start out at. I don't know how I would even afford all of this. But, I do know this: I do not want to go through my life not doing what I have always wanted to do; and then wake up one day, wrinkled and bent with age and regret not living to it's fulness the life which God has given me.

Brianna

As I post this, I find myself blundering through the budding stage of my very own quest for simplicity. This quest has kind of snuck up on me. I didn't really recognize it until last night. The symptoms, though, have been showing themselves here and there(in me), for a while.

I'm finding myself day-dreaming and dreaming less about urban life, and more about foresty places, and country hostels.
I keep cleaning my desk and closet out over and over, searching for more stuff to get rid of.
I feel claustrophobic in my heavily-decorated room.
I've started to avoid buying new stuff.
Sleeping outside is becoming a habit.
I hardly listen to music in the car anymore.
I spend all the time I can outside.
I'm not following any shows this season (though that will change as soon as The Office comes back on, I must admit).
When I watch TV, it is often muted, and after periods of an hour or two, I get tired of it.
The sky and the ocean are on my mind a whole lot. (Think about how simple they are: just blue, and big, both of them).

A few days ago, I read something on someone's blog about simplicity, and how that is what we (church people) miss most after mission trips, and religious retreats. That article helped me recognize this growing desire in myself. I no longer want to be busy all the time. I want to take it slow, and have time to talk, think, and dream. I love finding places like that around me now, but I really would like to go somewhere so beautiful, and so unfamiliar that it scares, shocks, and excites me all at once.

Just some silly thoughts.

Lydia

Seeing how it's a rainy day outside, and today is my first whole day at home this school year (that's pretty bad when you're homeschooled, and it is September, mind you.) what else would I be doing besides thinking about life. And yearning to write. It's simply in my nature, I can't deny it.
Anyway, I've been noticing how things go over and over. I'm rocking with the continual ebb and flow of life, and whereas it used to bore me, I am now loving it. I've started doing things that I did before, but haven't for a while. Like school, obviously, but also running (!!!!), and looking forward to the weekend, and seeing people who I didn't get to see over the summer. It's just crazy that before a year is up, I'll be starting all of this for the last time. After that last year, then I'll start something new. What I wonder is, will that which I start repeat and repeat, or will it be different every year, every day? I wonder how many different "pieces" of my life I will be able to discern, once I near the sunset of it all. Like, will there be my childhood, my young adulthood (high school, that is), and then everything else? Or will it all be separated by different events and changes? Maybe, just maybe, it'll be one chaotic, indescribable journey that takes me to the edge of God's love and back. I would like that.
It's a curious thing, this life, and every minute takes me closer to the rest of it. All I really know is that it is going to be good. So I'm excited. I hope that you are too. Excited about your life, I mean, not mine. Well feel free to be excited about mine too...haha.

Lydia

There's a lot here. Like, right here: religions, and cultures, and books, and booze, and light, and transportation. It's all so dang available, and all so custom-made. There are twenty different colours of ten different styles. There are six different flavors for 3 different sizes. There are tall people, and short people, and happy people, and downers. And we are surrounded by this diversity. It is, once again, right here. What if it wasn't, though?
One day this planet has got to run out of oil. There just can't be an endless supply. Maybe there will be a day without taxis or buses or personal vehicles. A day without jet planes; big or small.
No matter which one comes first-my death, or the end of modern travel, there are a few things I want to experience before then, (i.e....)
I want to have flown helicopters over more rural villages than I can name.
I want to have seen life at it's best, I want to have seen life at its worst.
I want to have peed in at least thirteen countries.
I don't want to have spent my time being bored-I want to have been entertained by diversity.
I am going to be sure that I have listened to the music of the world without really listening to the tune stuck in my own head.
I am going see to it that all my relationships with those whose paths have crossed mine are one-hundred percent solid.
I want to be sure and see the things I need to see, and learn the things I need to learn.
I want to have climbed the trees, I want to have flown the kite, I want to have chanted the chanted, I want to have lept the leap, I want to have fought the battle, I want to have kicked the futbol, I want to have believed in the failure, I want to have tagged the skyscraper, I want to have fed off the earth, I want to have painted the sky, I want to have delivered the message, I want to have smelled the exotic flower, I want to have made the choice; I want to have lived the life.

Lydia

Journey> noun
A traveling from one place to another, usually taking a long time.

Rocky> adjective
Full of or abounding in rocks.

Mountain>noun
A natural elevation of the earth's surface rising more or less abruptly to a summit, and attaining an altitude greater than that of a hill, usually greater than 2,000 ft. (610 m).

Hike>verb (used without object)
To walk or march a great distance, esp. in rural areas, for pleasure, exercise, military training, or the like.

Sunburn>noun, verb
Inflammation of skin caused by overexposure to the sun.

Return>verb(without object)
To go or come back, as to a former place, position, or state: to return from abroad.

Yeah, we went there. Did that. Got one.

Lydia

that city of trust.

Everyday comes with its own oppurtunities to trust and build trust. With every day that passes free of violation, and betrayal one becomes more and more trusting. And then one is betrayed, or let down, or forgotten and it starts all over. Back from the point where you think you'll never trust again and you'll never find your place. For most those spells don't last long. Soon one is back on his/her feet ready to face it all again and accept people and their sometimes-beautiful, sometimes-cruel imperfections. Ones' own shortcomings brought to light help one to regain trust in others also. One sees that he/she isn't perfect and neither are other people but we all mean well, right? But what if the hurt was constant and what if every moment in your life that meant something special because someone did something kind or put their trust in you turned into a moment when you were mistreated or betrayed? What if there weren't those times for recovery after every heart break? What if each torn heart string led to another being plucked too violently upon? Would every single strand of belief and feeling be broken, violated, and torn? What would happen then? How could one return to a time before such pain wreaked havoc upon you, body and soul? The road to redemption is a bitter place that not all are blessed enough to see the end of. But many do. At the end of that road there is a brilliant white city where nothing bad happens. Nothing bad. In that place, light everlasting will take the place of this present darkness. There no one will harm you and you will no longer have the desire to hurt others. There all will be made new. The forgiven whore will sing a new song of purity and grace and the repentant drug lord will pour himself out at the footstool of the Most High. There, beautiful children-even those born in brothels-if they have been made new, will never fear nor doubt nor hunger again.That city is perfect. That city is full of tearful reunions and heartfelt song. That city is where I am going.

Lydia