Psalm 1 Rewritten

For a writing assignment, I had to rewrite Psalm 1 as an acrostic. If you can't figure it out, my version spells THELAW over six verses which imitate the original psalm. I was told to use my "landscape" to inform the poem's content and style. This is the (feeble first draft) result:

The woman is blessed whose eyes reject false beauty,

whose ears ignore the deceptive whispers of desire,

whose mouth shuts against judgment and gossip.

Her felicity is found in the Word of her heavenly Father;

            it is written on her heart throughout the days,

            occupying her mind when she lays down to rest.

Ever in joy she blossoms, like a radiant red flower blooming

            on the desert cactus that never dies for want of rain,

            for it holds its hope of life within, and is always green.

Look how the wicked suffer their own misfortune:

            they are like tumbleweeds buffeted in a wind,

            dead, lonely, without rest in all the dry desert.

All those whose hope is in the law of the Lord will stand,

ready for the judgment, joined together with the righteous;

            but the wicked and the sinners will not be found among them.

Well does the Lord know the hearts and minds of all,

            their souls like books, open for him to read in full;

            the righteous will be taken up, the wicked thrown to the fire.

I See the Light

Over the last week I've been feeling a lot of doubt about my major. I haven't really been doing much of anything film-related lately, and I've been focusing more on my Torrey work. It feels more important to me, and in some ways it is. The Torrey program is probably the best possible path to follow for spiritual, mental and personal growth. But it has been taking over my life, and I've felt guilty about neglecting my other passions. I even began to doubt that they were anything more than vague interests. After leaving my non-Torrey desires on the shelf, they got a bit dusty.

Today I took down those old desires and dusted them off. In the afternoon I helped a friend with her directing project and I remembered how much I loved being on a film set, even though this was really just two film students, two actors, and a camera. Later in the evening I went to the opening night of Into the Woods. Before it started, there was a Q&A with the vocal director, one of the main cast, and the assistant director Amick Byram. Amick talked about the importance of storytelling and what a huge role it has played in history. This woke the slumbering storyteller inside of me, and seeing the play proved to me how influential a story can be.

I was very encouraged to find that I still very much enjoyed these previous passions of mine. It was encouraging to realize that I had neglected but never abandoned them. The joy of working on a film and seeing a play has inspired new confidence in me that I truly am in the right major. I am, have always been, and will always be a storyteller. I need to learn to balance my time between my passions, but half the battle is realizing what my passions are. Tonight I have remembered my passions, and I call them my own. I have remembered that I am passionate.

Now I'm here
Blinking in the starlight
Now I'm here
Suddenly I see
Standing here
It's oh, so clear
I'm where I'm meant to be


And at last, I see the light
And it's like the fog has lifted
And at last, I see the light
And it's like the sky is new
And it's warm and real and bright
And the world has somehow shifted
All at once
Everything looks different

Brains over Beauty

One of my many struggles has been to find time to fulfill all of my various ambitions. Throughout high school, the highest among these (in my mind) have always been: become well-rounded and accomplished, build strong friendships, cultivate my relationship with God, have a hot body. In that order. Looking at the list, it is easy to spot the thing that doesn't belong, but thanks to a culture with a screwed (and I mean that in both senses) view of morality, having a "hot" body made the list. Thankfully, I never lost my sense of the other things that are truly important in life, but thoughts and desires for my appearance were always in the back of my mind, festering, feeding insecurities. My moral compass was out of wack.

Recently, I've been able to reset my priorities so that they look like this: cultivate my relationship with God, build strong friendships, become well-rounded and accomplished, be healthy. The first three in the list I often attend to out of order, but the Holy Spirit has been sending me a lot of reminders about what comes first, and I'm working on putting that into action. Notice, however, that there is still a fourth item on the list. It is a legitimate priority, and I am dedicated to making sure that I take care of myself. But. Under this healthy heading, I have still managed to squeeze in the idea of having a nice body, a Hollywood body, a body which I am not designed to have.

In our Torrey session tonight we discussed Plato's Symposium under the director of the program, Dr. Reynolds. We talked about many hard and heart-wrenching things, but there is one topic I want to address specifically. We observed, both in the text and our knowledge of culture, that the attractive people garner the most attention from the public, but they are not the intellectuals of our society. This is not because beautiful people are stupid. It is because the attractive people (in the view of society) have to spend too much time on their appearance to be well-read and generally informed. You cannot have both brains and beauty, unless you are fortunate enough to come by them naturally. The simple fact of the time involved forces you to choose one or the other. And tonight, I'm choosing brains.

If I want to accomplish the first three things on my list, I don't have time to spend worrying about having a hot body. I can still be healthy, but spending extensive time working on my physique every day is just not possible. I've known this for a long time, but now I've come to accept it. I don't want people to give me their attention because I'm attractive. I want them to give me their attention because I am interesting, intelligent, informed, and unique.

Someday, God willing, a man will fall in love with me. He will love me not because of my beauty, but because of my brains. More importantly, he will love me not for what's in my head, but what's in my heart.

That's who I want to be.