i think my heart's melting

A Streetcar Named Desire

I can hardly believe I lived 20 years without ever reading anything by Tennessee Williams. I read Streetcar last night for one of my classes and fell in love. Then I watched the movie and fell in love all over again. It's been running through my head and I can't get it out. You've gotta read the play if you haven't! And then watch the movie. Don't spoil it by watching the movie first! I know I'm tempting you with the trailer, but it's so worth the read first!

ideas for this weekend

Don't know what to do this weekend? Ditch the mundane (tv, parties, fb surfing, whatever) and try something fresh:

1.  Visit a nursing home. There are few things as rewarding as helping others feel loved.

2. Did you know the BYU women's locker room has a sauna?  (I'm assuming the men have one, too.)  Take some time for yourself and relax in the heat.

3. Grab a friend, roommate, or significant other and try partner yoga. 

4. Philosophy lover? Give your brain a workout and read about Natural Law.  Try The First Grace: Rediscovering the Natural Law in the Post-Christian World and Natural Law: Reflections on Theory & Practice

5. It's getting warmer outside!  No excuse to stay in :) Pick a race to train for and hit the pavement.

6. Bake a batch of healthy cookies for the neighbors you don't know yet.

7.  Attend different worship services (besides your own faith) around your community.

8. Get artsy and head to a museum for inspiration. The Carl Bloch exhibit, currently at BYU, is fantastic!

happy weekend! <3

Don't you love it when you discover you can do something that you couldn't do before?!

Why not take some risks?  Why not embrace some new challenges?  Take a class you know will be hard, but that you want to take because you're interested--Forget grades and learn for the sake of learning!  Pick up a new hobby that isn't exactly your forte.  Go to that hard-core workout class that you can't get through right now, but one day might be able to.  Apply for that study abroad you've been putting off because you don't know if it could actually happen.  Make that special goal you've been avoiding because you don't know if you really have the self disciple to carry it out--Choose to forget your fears and make up your mind to do what it takes.

Push your boundaries.  Reach for opportunities, and God will make a way for you to accomplish new things.  I know He will.

I love you all! :)

these phases in life

Sometimes I go through phases where I feel like I'm in a "rut."  But the great thing is, I always get out of the rut (even if it takes a while) and upon getting out, I find that I've become a better person.

Anytime I get in an off-mode, I know it's because either 1) There is something wrong with my attitude or 2) I'm supposed to learn a specific lesson.  Actually, it's usually both of these concepts combined.  So I have these awful--yet really wonderful--opportunities to do some serious self-evaluating and then find out how to correct the problems I'm facing at the time.  In that process I always learn something very particular that I could not have learned unless I went through the pain myself.  There are important lessons we can learn from others without having to make mistakes ourselves or venture beyond our comfort zones, but many lessons--and usually the ones which are most rewarding to learn--are lessons we have to learn on our own.  And it gets messy.  

I really do love that about life, though!  The more I live, the more I realize just how much I can change and progress, and as I make changes, I figure out who I am.  Or maybe I just create the person I want to become.

Sometimes I'd like to see myself as God sees me.  I believe our potential, as creations made by God, is limitless.

Life for me right now is all about figuring who I am and creating the person I want to become.  I'm trying to figure "stuff" out.  I'm trying to understand the core of what drives and motivates me.  What do I value?  Why do I do what I do?  What's the point?

I'm also working on spirituality.  I have been religious for years now, but am I spiritual?  Am I really in-tune with God, nature, and humans?  Do I listen?  Do I think outside of the immediate, physical world?  Do I make quiet time to commune with God and nature?  Do I make time for other people?

Why am I here and what am I supposed to learn?

For me, these questions are really quite exciting--they're a mess in my brain right now, but sometimes, in rare little bits of revelation, certain things click and make sense!  Of course, then more questions come and my mind starts getting messy again and I start the procress all over...

and then--after sweat, blood & tears--
I learn something new

:)

red lentil soup recipe

Since I've gone *mostly* vegan these days, I've been eating lots of yummy lentil soup.  Try this recipe from Bob's Red Mill--it's my favorite lately, and Ariel also loves it, so you can trust both of our opinions--it's so good and so, so easy! I use coconut oil instead of olive oil.  And only 1 TBSP! Coconut oil is great for your skin and has many other benefits.  Also, you can add more spinach. Lots more.  Trust me, it's delicious.

Rachel's Red Lentil Soup
Contributed by Bob's Red Mill Natural Foods 

Ingredients 1 Onion, chopped  1/4 cup Olive Oil  2 Carrots, diced  2 stalks Celery, chopped  1 tsp. Oregano  1 Bay Leaf  1 tsp. Basil  1 (14.5 ounce) can crushed Tomatoes  2 cups Red Lentils  8 cups Water  1/2 cup Spinach, rinsed and thinly sliced  2 Tbsp. Vinegar  Salt and Pepper to taste
Directions
In a large soup pot, heat oil over medium heat. Add onions, carrots and celery; cook and stir until onion is tender. Stir in garlic, bay leaf, oregano and basil; cook for 2 minutes. Stir in lentils and add water and tomatoes. bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for at least 1 hour. When ready to serve. Stir in spinach and cook until it wilts. Stir in vinegar and season to taste with salt and pepper and more vinegar is desired. Makes 6 servings.

I think the desire to know and become and create is within each of us but we so often forget what we are destined for.  That's tragedy and a life wasted.

I want to reach my hand out into the expanse and scoop out a handful of stars.

Then I want to sprinkle them across the galaxy and watch them fall like drops of rain.

I want to create worlds.  It's so beautiful and epic, my epitome of a dream.

See?  This is why I can't sleep.  Thoughts, beautiful thoughts, always on my mind.

men on the big screen.

Why has it become a trend in the film industry to portray men as small-minded, ignorant, hypocritical, unfaithful, lazy, deceitful, selfish idiots?  Do I sound a little harsh?  Think about the majority of male characters on tv shows and movies, take a moment to evaluate their character, and you just might come to agree with me.

Women are always talking about how men need to step up to the plate, but how can we expect them to raise the bar when there is no bar in popular, modern media?  Maybe one of the reasons trashy examples of men on the screen bother me is because I'm wondering how I'm going to raise my future sons to be constant, honest, respectful, intelligent, charitable, hard-working, refined men when they have so many bad examples to look to in the media.

I want Truth.
yes, give me Excellence. 
pure and ceaseless Love 
Undiluted. 
Fire? Bring Fire.
Brilliant days and starry nights beg
Timelessness,
enduring Existence.

After a week of writer's block, anxiety, temper tantrums, desperate phone calls home to my poor mother venting my frustration, questioning my existence, pestering my professors, seriously considering changing my major, slowly losing my sanity, burying myself in deep, unanswerable questions of theology, petitioning/begging God for some kind of answer--I have FINALLY come up with a relevant thesis about George Herbert's poetry that I believe in and care to write about and (dare I say it?) LOVE.


This is satisfaction and happiness.  Don't you love it when you work so hard for something, push yourself to the edge of your ability, and then when you're almost sure you will fail, suddenly things come together?!!!! Then you look back and think, "Woah, that was rough, but I could do it again," and then you keep moving forward in life so you end up having those experiences over and over and over, whether they be intellectual, spiritual, or physical.  


Refinement.  

miss you, grandpa.

Grandpa with Eric, Jared, Chris, Alini, Christi,
Kaitlin (had black eyes from a broken nose), me, Shalane
-Island Park, summer 2006

Grandpa Carson died a few months ago.  I love him and think of him often.

Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon.

She came yesterday to BYU for a poetry reading, but I had class during the time she was here so I missed out.  One of my professors gave us a link to hear some of her poetry online and I've been listening to it tonight and loving it.  Check it out here.  Also, thank you, Vimeo, for this:


Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon reads at the 2009 Natinal Book Awards Finalist Event from National Book Foundation on Vimeo.

Leisure: The Basis of Culture

In a class I'm taking this semester, we're approaching the study of history by looking at ethics, philosophy, and civilization as a whole, so we're reading various books with different theories; today as I read one of our required books, Leisure: The Basis of Culture, I had what Coach Bob Neal would call a "Peak experience."

Josef Pieper, a German philosopher, "destroys common misconceptions about the idea of leisure and its relation to work.  Leisure is not ideleness, but an attitude of the mind and a condition of the soul that fosters receptivity to both physical and spiritual realities.  The author points out that sound philosophy and authentic religion can be born only in leisure--a leisure that allows time for the contemplation of things, including the nature of God...Pieper warns that unless we recover true leisure--the ability for silence, contemplation and insight; for receptivity and intuitive openness to truth--and replace our frenetic amusments and relentless striving, we will destroy our culture and ourselves" (quote taken from the back of the book).  

Josef Pieper

The book is a quick read and it's full of important ideas like: "[Man] should not be wholly absorbed in the clear-cut milieu of his strictly limited function...he should retain the faculty of grasping the world as a whole and realizing his full potentialities as an entity meant to reach Wholeness" (p. 50).  

And, as Aristotle said, "A man will live thus, not to the extent that he is a man, but to the extent that a divine principle dwells within him" (p. 51).  

Oh, I do love a good book that changes my life paradigm!! You can order it here.

insomnia.

I toss and turn in bed for hours.  The problem is my brain just goes and goes. And goes.

If I were a brilliant scientist, musician, or writer, I'd have an excuse to be up all night working on something fantastic.  Unfortunately, all the ideas flying around in my brain right now are not very fantastic. Perhaps I'm on the verge of something just waiting to be created at the right time...

Except for once, Brain, can you slow down and let me sleep?  I have a yoga class in 5 hours and a day of classes and paper-writing ahead!

insomnia in Jerusalem, Sept 2010

not gonna go sky diving, but...

Today I was praying for some answers and suddenly I got the thought, "What would you do if you were going to die tomorrow?"  Yeah, yeah, it sounds cheesy (maybe because of certain oh-so-annoying songs that tell you to live like you're dying and go sky diving, blah blah, blah--actually that's a pretty good song so never mind, but you know what I'm saying) except this was oh-so-not cheesy for me, because I realized I have not been living life to the fullest lately.  I'm pretty sure I'm not going to die tomorrow, BUT I want to start thinking about that a little more and make each day count and go ahead and plan some of the more outlandish things I want to do.  Of course, most of the things I want to do take money and I don't have much, but whatever--I'll work it out if it's supposed to happen.  But alas, the big plans will have to wait; I  have homework that's definitely due tomorrow, whether or not I bite the dust.

happy!

I am SO happy I can hardly sit still, I just want to run all over my apartment and scream and squeal and jump up and down and then go outside in the freezing cold and hug strangers and jump in the snow and howl at the moon!!!!!

Why? Because I have everything a girl could ask for, that's why.

I live in a free country,
I have supportive family and friends,
I'm getting an education,
I'm majoring in something I love,
I'm taking interesting classes,
I'm blessed with health,
I have a bed to sleep on in an apartment with heat,
I have fresh food to eat and clean water to drink every day,
and the list of things I'm thankful for could go on and on and on.

Western Wall.

The Western Wall was probably my favorite place to go to in Jerusalem. In September, I emailed my family about my first experience there, so I'm just going to copy and paste parts of the email below...

Note: The following pics were taken at different times over the semester.

Dear Mom, Dad, Kaitlin, and Shalane,

Last night our group had the special opportunity to go to the Western Wall and be there as the Jews began their Sabbath celebration.  As you know, the Jewish Sabbath begins Friday at sundown.  Hundreds of people gather at the Western Wall to offer prayers, read scripture, sing praises, and dance.   Professor Chadwick explained the sacredness of the place by comparing it to how we feel about our temples. The Western Wall is like an open-air temple for our Jewish friends.   We can't use electronics or take pictures while there during the Sabbath, but it's okay to take pics on other days.

A gate surrounds the area of the Wall.  To get in, you have to go through security and metal detectors.  The plaza inside the gate is basically a huge square on a slope.  The further you are away from the Wall, the higher on the slope you are, and the more you can see what is going on down below you at the wall.  As you get closer to the wall, you see less people worshipping but more of the massive wall.  

There is a fence separating the Wall into two sides: one for males and one for females.  Professor Chadwick said the reason they separate it into two sections is so the males can focus on worshipping God rather than being distracted by women.  J The males are required to wear a head covering.  Some wear kippas and others wear different hats; it just depends on preference or how conservative you are.  The Russian Orthodox Jews wear huge furry hats.  Most of the men in our group from the center bought kippas to wear for the occasion.  The women don’t have to cover their heads, but many Jewish women, especially those who are more conservative, chose to cover their hair with scarves. 

When we went past security and into the area where the wall is, I felt so happy to be there!  I was so impressed with the devotion I saw around me.  The men’s section of the wall was much bigger than the women’s section, and the men were much louder in their worship. There was a circle of upbeat men who were joyfully dancing and singing.  It was fun to watch!  I didn't see much dancing on the women’s side.  I decided to go make my way through the crowd toward the Wall. It took a while to make it there, but I enjoyed watching the women around me as they fervently worshiped Jehovah by reading scripture and/or softly praying or singing in Hebrew.  At the Wall people were crying, touching and kissing the stone, and offering prayers.   It was absolutely beautiful.  I felt the spirit there and thought about how God hears all of our prayers and loves all of His children.  Later that evening when I came back to the Wall for the second time, I offered a prayer of thanks, not only for my faith, but for the Jewish faith as well. 

Before coming here, I hardly knew anything about the history of the Jews and the persecution they have been through.  All I really knew about was the Holocaust, so I have been shocked as I’ve read some of the background on what has been going on throughout the history of mankind.  I don’t know of a people that has been so oppressed and degraded.  The miracle is that the faith has survived and is flourishing.  

It's hard to explain being here.  It’s basically just beautiful being surrounded by people of all different faiths and backgrounds and being able to take part in their celebrations of God.  I really could not ask for more than to be here!  I rejoice in God and in His blessings.  I know He loves and guides us.  And I love you all SO much!

Love,
Jenna

___________________________________________________

Written prayers stuffed into cracks in the Wall.

Women's side of the Wall.

Men's side on a quiet day. 

Women reading Torah where they have a view of whole wall before them.

Torah in Hebrew.

Rabbis at the wall.

Writing my own prayer to put in the Wall.

On an almost empty day--hardly any men, but there were more women as you can see on the other side of the divider.

christmas wish list.

dear Santa, please bring me:


new running shoes
a haircut (3.5 months in a foreign country will put this at the top of anyone's Christmas list) 
the new moosewood cookbook (check it out here)
a blizzard-free, delay-free flight home on dec 16th 


love,
jenna

christmas eve 2009

20th birthday.

 On Nov 28 I said goodbye to being a teenager.  This is gonna be my best year yet!! I'm SO excited just to be alive right here, right now--ya know? My goals for this year of life are:

-Rejoice every day

-Do the best with what I have each day

-Work on losing my life for Christ (Matthew 10:39)

-Get better at loving myself & other people

-Learn something new each day & apply it  

nov 2010 in Galilee