To Friends and Family

To friends and family, and those who are suspended somewhere between those roles. To the people who support me, who offer both challenges and encouragement as I move through life: I thank you.

I am truly sorry to those who I have failed to keep in contact with. You are wonderful people. I want my friends to know: You are like family to me. I want my family to know: You are more than people I obligatorily call once in a while or see at large gatherings. You are also my friends. I'm sorry if I ever hurt any of you or frustrated you with my crazy ways. Thanks for putting up with me.

That being said, I thought I'd give a bit of a life update to everyone, which I don't think I have done for quite some time. My Junior year has been excellent. It flew by and I grew a lot through classes, people, and experiences. I honestly started out this school year with some anxiety and doubt in my heart. Although the summer was full of rewarding experiences, it was also difficult in some ways, and left me with some lingering questions and pain that had not been addressed. During the first few months back, I doubted God more than ever. I'm not really sure of the exact reasons, and I don't think they are too important to say now. I made mistakes, lost sight of hope and priorities, and struggled with being bitter, careless, and guarded, among other things. I may have strayed a little off of the path that some would wish me to stay on. And that's just it: I didn't really know who I was walking down that path for. This school, this work, my “faith,” my relationships...Who is it for?

At some point, (or several points) in a person's life, they have to look around to see if they live like they do because they have truly seen an empty tomb, or if they live with the mere acceptance that their parents showed them a great work of fiction that mentions an empty tomb. I'm not saying I didn't believe before this year, or that I have it all together now, but some of my previous values and assumptions were stripped away until I had to discover true faith and true hope. It was like a huge lightbulb had shattered and all that was left was this tiny little spark of a flame that God has helped me to protect. It's a small flame, but it is fiercely hot, and I am more certain of it than almost anything else. Because when everything else shatters, it flickers, but does not go out.

Meanwhile, this year I have prepared for my Human Needs and Global Resources internship that starts in about a month, and I am aware that more challenges and adventures are on the horizon. I have taken both difficult and easy classes, made new relationships and seen others drift sadly away. I grew close to people who were able to stick with me. It wasn't a terrible year. It was actually a wonderful one, that I always want to remember. I wrote my first screenplay and got my first piece of writing published in print. I wrote an entire rap album and had some beautiful conversations. My brother got married! And he's applying to med school. My other brother inspired me with his updates from Samaritan's Purse in Northern Japan. My sister and brother-in-law got settled down at their "grown-up" jobs, but they still know how to have a good time. (And I don't just mean Harry Potter marathons). Some friends got married and others are getting married. I spent time in like 10 different states and even a new country. I had crazy parties as well as times of tender silence. I watched the seeds of dreams in people get watered and begin to sprout. I had my life changed by some speakers, and had enriching naps while listening to other speakers. I got a tattoo. I had an awesome spring break. I was real with people. I played soccer, made lattes, fell in love with rap music, and toured my favourite building, (the Chicago Tribune Towers). I gathered with the Japanese community here to pray for our country every week. I met Man, the Burmese woman that I tried to tutor, but only ended up being inspired by her strength and making a fool of myself as I acted out various lessons. I changed my life plans about six times.

I learned that I don't have to be an Angel. I can be a "B"ngel or a "C"ngel and Jesus will still love me. I learned about loving all kinds of people and expressing myself in different ways. I learned about being joyful and thankful, even when it doesn't flow naturally, because having joy and hope, even when you don't feel it, or don't fully understand your life---that's what faith is. And when we have faith, God can accomplish super cool things. I'm not just talking regular cool things, I'm talking SUPER cool things. Even the regular cool things become SUPER cool when you see then through a faith lens. Just wait. Watch. Listen. Listening is so important. Don't stand still and let life happen around you. Run, leap, fall down, roll, stand back up, shake off the dirt, keep running. 

All that to say: I am still alive, living for God as best I can. I have no real life plan, but I'm ok with that, so I hope you are too. My roommate, Frances, got a ticket to come to Japan with me for a week in May, so I am really excited to hang out with her at home. I will be home until early June, when I leave for Cambodia.

Once in Cambodia, I will be a communication intern at World Relief Cambodia until December. This means I will be interacting with people who are working with or being helped by WR's various programs for Child and maternal healthcare, HIV/AIDS prevention and support, micro-enterprising for those with less opportunities, agriculture, and anti-human trafficking efforts. I will listen to their stories, write about what is happening, photograph, and film. It's all still very vague, but I'm excited to get involved however I can and open to whatever God has to teach me through this. At the same time as the internship, I will be taking a few human development and anthropology courses by correspondence, doing an ethnography project and a communications independent project, and trying to learn and experience as much as I can. It has been a little stressful getting all the logistics together and corresponding between people while also trying to finish up classes here and prepare to leave all of my friends, but I am so glad for this opportunity. I would really appreciate prayer while I am there. I don't know a lot of specifics to pray for yet, but just having courage and resources to get there and start something new will be difficult. I will try to keep posting updates throughout my time. 

I hope to be able to catch up with everyone soon. I love you so much. 

Marisa

Kingdom

Nowadays I feel like I'm on a backtrack

The stage is spinning backwards, the player's a little out of wack.

Give me drips of water in a cage like a lab rat

The music's all in minor key, my clothes are all in black.

Say I look like a funeral, well maybe I am.

Got my lips sealed  tight like the shell of a clam

I give a jab to the grotesque fingers of Uncle Sam,

Bang my head on Heaven's door like a battering ram

I'm trapped inside the unknowable “why”

Kneeling in the middle of a dust storm in Dubai,

with sand caked in my eye so I can't even cry,

Is execution the punishment for wanting to die?

If the Kingdom is here, why do its windows have bars?

If the doctor is healing, why do I have scars?

If there's Heaven above, why do we just see a shard?

If we're covered in love, why are we fighting so hard?

We're livin' in a world where Marines pee on corpses

Millionaires in porches control our portion

The 99% don't even care about the forces

Beyond the numbing drugs that the government endorses

So busy with your sex and your money and divorces

And stuffing your face with burgers made of horses

And of course it's something where we're all involved

The rappers and the ministers can't be absolved.

But when I stare in the face of these demons, I feel defeated

How could the vomit on this earth be deleted?

What is it in this world that goes the most needed?

I know you won't show, but at least you might tweet it.

Hashtag “love?” Altruistic intentions

They might go beyond your i-god inventions

But the cybernetic world has a 3 second attention

So I feel the apprehension as I stand in dissension.

Now my eyes are looking wetter than yours, and a bit redder

Like a down-hill sledder, I'm partying double-header.

Maybe I don't follow all the rules to the letter

and the godly can't stand the smell of smoke on my sweater.

Outside I'm like steel, but there's wounds inside guarded

Can't help but feel completely disheartened

Like there's no way in hell that my mistakes could be pardoned

But maybe above the sun there's something getting started.

Is there something left for me beneath all the marine pee?

Can't understand the plan, it's so dark I can't see.

So cold I can't breath, So loud I can't hear

Is this dream of power just a regime of fear?

Smeared with the blood and confusion and tears

of the suffering around us, but we try to steer clear.

Take a look at the world inside the burning mirror

and scream through the smoke “the Kingdom is near.”

Revolution

I'm just trying to create something original something great

That will stand the test of the hand of fate

That will send the message before its too late

Of peace, and a life worth living

What stands to reason is a life of giving

And being forgiven for all my screw-ups

From bad to bust, I think the past just threw-up

On my present—so its time I grew-up

I hate fruitless fighting when the flame spreads across

Until its holocaust, holla if you're lost

It's all about the boss, we gotta take a stand

Truth glides through my fingers like a slippery sand

It's hard to change the land when opposition is banned

And beauty is canned, it's like candy

We got Miller Lite instead of brandy

And-he says that it's all fine and dandy

Cuz you're afraid of Rameses, afraid to be Ghandi

We are all a little bit pansy.

I'm sinking right in to this perilous couch

With my eyes glazed over and my shoulders slouched

And Check this: I'm running out of Chex Mix

So I savour each bite like its Christmas

If you think watching the news will make you turn off the snooze

then you gotta stop drinking the government's booze.

When you let the TV put your mind on cruise control

then you lose control

Let corporations take what they choose: your soul.

When you see what it cost, all that you lost

Will you take the path walked like Robert Frost

Don't be tossed around, take the overgrown road

Get on your soles, lift your overblown load

Of knowledge--you can't buy that here,

So let's raise the sword to face the fear

Raise the pen to race the darkness

as it erases, gazes turn heartless.

Face this maze, don't be a living carcass

There's still a spirit of life that can spark this

change, don't save it for tomorrow, cuz mark this:

There's no day like today to say what you gotta say

I have to keep smiling or I'll cry every day

I have to keep moving or I sink into the clay

If we walk on, we're proving, we will find a way

not to lay on that apathetic couch in dismay

We won't crumble away. We won't tatter or fray

We'll choose the right battle and on that ground stay

rooted. As there are many more recruited

You can't compute it. we will not be muted!  

De-face

You stand on the stage of the universe

Struggling to take a bow

Tripping on your grown-up ballgown

Wonder what people think now.

You think you're inadequate?

Even when the crowd shouts “no”

When you feel trials coming you get

terrified to face the blow

But Divine breathe is flowing through you,

behind and before and beyond,

and to the people all around you

Giving you a brand new dawn

Stop worrying that smart isn't genius,

that a C is worse that A

Feeling, pretty but not quite gorgeous

Wishing yesterday was today.

Sweat slides down your eyes and blinds you

In a fog of self-esteem

Try to trap everyone behind you

As you strain for the halo's gleam.

Even after all your feats,

All you can hear is your flaws

Ringing through the broken wires

Why can't you hear your applause?

People look like they're glowing

But they're all draped in disguise

If all you want to see is normal

You'll never want to open your eyes.

We're all trying to pass off the blame

But craziness pulls at our heels

Like Achilles in stilettos

We know just how weakness feels.

Reality check

Perfection's no reality

Though the media battles this truth so gallantly

We are all fragments of twisted humanity

Defined in our essence by total insanity.

Fumbling around on this spinning planet we

keep staring in the mirror and just can't let it be

the way we were made with a scribble and a shade

Now cease this charade 'cause that's not how lives are weighed

The warmth of curled lips or the depth behind the iris,

the spread of goodwill like an insidious virus

The willingness to stand on the high-dive of fate

and peel off your mask despite pride and hate.

That's the breath flowing through you

Exhaling what we wish to taste

But we don't want to dive into true

as we painfully de-face.

Like all the sudden your clothes are saran-wrap

Your skin is as clear as the sky

All the demons you hid inside you

Can be found by the scorching eye.

The spotlight will show no mercy

And the world may continue to scowl

But you have to get out of the nursery

And release that scraping howl

Let it radiate on your face when

you take off your mask

When you rise up from the basement

into the sun. Just bask

in the knowledge that you are accepted

And don't have to keep taking aim

You are a celestial wonder

you don't have to be ashamed

Feet

What happens when the voices that you trusted most mess up,

Lead you into the wild but are too afraid to 'fess up?

What happens when you realize that your model of truth

has been lying to you?

Now what am I supposed to do about the words I learned to use?

Your eyes would illuminate in all the dark places

but now they absorb light from our fiery faces.

Your footsteps were long and deep as I hopped to the next

Till my gaze rose to meet this vast nothingness

My world tips and spins as the cheshire cat grins

Now the winner loses, but nobody wins.

Where are my own feet? Are they lost forever?

Sinking into these footprints of never?

What was left is right and what was right is wrong

And now they're making horror movies out of sing-a-longs.

I keep on sliding up and leaping straight down

mumbling and tumbling into the ceiling-ground.

A life that used to be like the rows of a choir

has been slapped into a drunken circus on fire.

My heart hammers harder and my legs swivel faster

hoping to find a ticket out of this disaster.

In the midst of the smoke and the sick-cycle drone,

my feet—yes my own—slam into something stone.

I drink in the smell of a rock never changing

and take root on paths that won't need rearranging.

The direction of this bedrock is still up for grabs

But it is unshaking beneath my tired scabs.  

The Son Will Rise

Level 9 quaking, no anticipating destruction as far as the eye can see.

Surging power blackout, lines at the checkout, trains stop.

suddenly

Roads twist like wires, squealing of tires, showers of glass

Gotta stand your ground,

wonder who's been found,

and how long it will last?

Oh Japan aishiteruyo

Find solid ground, ganbarou

I see your weary soul, I see you lose control,

But lift up your eyes,

'Cause in the morning your sun will rise.

Our hearts, our hands are shaking, the lives we built are breaking

breaking

down

The earth tilts on its axis, now the moon never waxes. Darkness all around.

Smoke shrouds the skyline, the children are crying. We can't ignore.

How the waves hit the people leaving only a steeple as waters roar.

Oh Japan aishiteruyo!

Find solid ground, ganbarou

I see your weary soul, I see you lose control,

But lift up your eyes,

'Cause in the morning your sun will rise.

Who can be blamed

for buildings in flames and mass evacuation?

The people who are still here are trembling in such fear and devastation

Still, I have to ask the question why,

tens of thousands had to die?

What do you mean you don't know?

Can we live in trust that

out of this dust that,

something new and beautiful will grow?

Oh Japan aishiteruyo!

Find solid ground, ganbarou

I see your weary soul, I see you lose control,

But lift up your eyes,

'Cause in the morning your sun will rise.

Terrifying aftershocks,

power plants like ticking clocks spewing radiation.

How will we ever unwind

these tangles as we try to find hope for this nation?

Japan, I know you feel destroyed,

like your world has become void, but try to be brave.

I wonder

with houses blown to pieces, will people cry to Jesus to come save?

Oh Japan aishiteruyo!

Find solid ground, ganbarou

I see your weary soul, I see you lose control,

But lift up your eyes,

'Cause in the morning your sun will rise.

Now the months go rolling by, like clouds in the silent sky

We're all “fine.”

But the farmers throw away their crops

People flee faster than morale drops

When will the next one resign?

Has it been so long

We've forgotten all the wrong, and we turn away

Stand up on this cracked street, shake the dust off your feet

Nihon Ganbare!

Too Cool For Cool

Let Me introduce you to the kings of microbrew

Beers, classy lattes and Argo tea too

They'll sink you like Titanic if you don't give them organic,

Free range, free trade—just don't make them panic

They gotta eat light 'cause their jeans are too tight

Welcome to the post-modern hipster plight.

Bodies emaciated, minds inebriated

But they never hated on you, unless you weren't like them.

Toms and Cons alternated with something funky and underrated

These are proudly paraded under a cuffed up hem.

All caffeinated and justice-related

With pricy bags faded, like thrift-store gems.

They like social justice and will gladly discuss this

In a cool little club playing underground tunes

But it's gotta be indie, 'cause that is what's trendy--

If too many know it then they're way too mainstream

Scarf-draped heroes with body mass: zero

Despite the appearance, they're not what they seem

Think society should be leveled, but hair perfectly disheveled,

while snapping photos and black and white stills

Thicker-rimmed glasses separates them from the masses

as well as other unique artsy skills.

Headbands with a T-rex, headphones and V-necks

Don't you know all this protesting won't pay the bills?