wild melody

struggling with a heavy heart today, knowing that the battle is usually won with song but unable to get there.  unable = pretty much sums me up today, actually.  opening my bible with little faith, because usually I need to worship myself out of my funks before I read. but desperate I open my heart and whisper "oh God where is your hope in this book?" this never happens, so I'm not offering this as a healthy method of studying the word... but I flip through and haphazardly stop at Zechariah 10, bc "restoration" caught my eye.  what. I've read this book cover to cover many times, and it's new. I can't remember the last time the Word felt fresh or new to me. here, amidst chapters of bizarre visions & judgment & wrath on Isreal's enemies; is a psalm of restoration.  “My anger is hot against the shepherds, and I will punish the leaders; for the Lord of hosts cares for his flock, the house of Judah, and will make them like his majestic steed i...

I wrote this shortly after my 27 birthday; and while I'm in a different place I wanted to post it here so I don't lose it.  I'm sitting here reading a memoir from a Jewish boy who escaped the Soviet Union with his family in the late 1980s. I thought it would expand my mind, & my heart; put myself in another's very different shoes for a while. Maybe gain a little more insight into the history of the Ukraine I know & love so fiercely.  I didn't think I could possibly relate. I didn't expect to find myself reflected. I didn't foresee having to  move the book so the pages don't wrinkle--not from tears of empathy for his pain, but of familiarity.  I didn't expect to hear I wasn't alone from such a vastly different experience.  as he explains his self-loathing, his need to run from who he is. the journey of realizing the communist hatred for his ethnicity has become his own. as he talks about trying to run from himsel...

The Lone Bellow - "Watch Over Us" Unplugged from Michael Leiato on Vimeo . ^^this band for me embodies things that i doubt they have any idea of: that beauty can be born from struggle. the truth that hard fighting doesn't leave a pretty face behind it, that some sorrows scar & forever alter our hearts. something powerful happens when they sing. it's as if the songs are crafted no longer with words & notes but instead with honesty, blood, sweat, pain. a weakness refusing to shatter; hope refusing to surrender. it bleeds into the music and creates a great exchange: what overflows onto the listeners is a beautiful courage, a fierce grace, a real and messy hope. it breathes the gospel without one bible verse ever being stated. maybe it's just what deep souls sound like when they allow themselves to spill over with the rawness of everything they have. maybe it's so rare because few people engage their sufferings and let it deepen them. or maybe so man...

 what I really want is just to sail around the world & live at sea. to be a drifter, to have stories, to be free & strange & content. I want to delve a little deeper into the cultures of the world with each stop. I want to become familiar with/able to converse in many languages. not from textbooks, from necessity. from meeting like-hearted people, from learning to read the soul reflected in their eyes and thus connect meanings to language. I want to know my capabilities thoroughly--when to jerry-rig, when to let a pro fix it. I long for weeks on end alone with myself and God. until my desperation is so fierce I finally let go of all my pride & fragility & fears. to regain the ease of speaking with Him, to feel again that His love & approval--securely mine already--are the rock of my joy. I want to be sure of myself again, & the sea always gives me that. I want to be a student of nature, reading the sky & sea as if my life depended on it. keeping me c...

is that it reminds there is still beauty & joy & light amidst all our broken messiness. it gives a voice to those of us who stifle our emotions. it's an expression for we who cannot find words powerful enough for the colors our hearts speak when they feel.  i still have days where i miss the freedom and release of dancing. i miss the tension of my soul untangling with the movements of my body. we are such interconnected beings. because however problematic the movie Dead Poets Society may be, there are truths and gems in the words of John Keating [especially taken out of context which he can't mind since he is forever doing that to his poets ;) ]  anyway in the words of Robin William's script:  "It's a battle, it's a war; and the casualties may very well be your hearts and souls... We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. ...

**all examples have been combined, changed, and editted so as to accurately reflect real-life situations; but none of them represent any one person's story because HIPPA is real.** today's theme song brought to you by the charts and faces of my first clinical setting of the new semester:  pediatric psychiatric crisis ward . grateful for the opportunity to be in this setting, not many students are. grateful for awesome nurses and a facility doing their best to help children that the rest of society views as a lost cause. glad i was able to interact with these children. there is a level of insight in observing & conversing that cannot be gained from just reading a chart. reading between the lines is easier when you are reading eyes. but i've been thinking ever since, it can't be a coincidence that every. single. child. had an unstable or non-existent family background. the majority of these kids? not violent towards anybody but themselves. sometimes medic...