"I went to Lake Bonny Park for this assignment, and I stayed there for at least 40 minutes."

Sitting at the park and just being still was refreshing for me today. I try to make it a point to go places like that and just sit in silence as often as I can because our lives can really get so busy so to go and sit and just be still is crucial I feel like. From our to do lists, to activities we are involved in, to just hanging out with friends; life gets busy so taking time to just stop and smell the roses is important. When we actually sit and stay still for longer than just five minutes we begin to realize there is this whole other world that exists and functions as we go on about our busy schedules day to day. There is the other side of God's creation that is functioning along side of us to keep this world spinning round and round and God didn't just put it there for us to live amongst. Creation is God's expression of Himself and its there for us to stop and enjoy and delight in just as He does. At home I can always tell when spring is here because I will begin to wake up and hear the birds outside of my window chirping as I wake up. It's like God's alarm clock for me and it sounds so sweet; nothing can replace that sound. And in the fall time (I know this doesn't happen as much in FL) the leafs begin to change colors and fall to the ground to make a scenery that looks as if God has taken a paint brush and painted the leafs to allow us to delight in all the brilliant colors alongside the road. I just can't express how much joy it brings me to see all of this around me, but yet so often I get so caught up in the business of life to really sit and enjoy the creation around us singing praise to our God.

As I lay in the grass and listened to the wind blowing and making the leafs of the trees speak all I could think was how amazing it was to hear this. We build our cities and communities up so much that we often forget what it sounds like for a tree to worship God as the wind blows through it's leafs. When is the last time we really sat and listened to nature praise God?? We need to make it a routine to do this because it's soothing to our soul when we join with creation and sing praise to Him; and it’s amazing what He has really blessed us with.

I feel the wind soft on my face as I

Walk the path man has made.

The trees to my right look like God

Planted them, but the trees across the street

Look like man planted them..

As I sit down, I realize little purple

Flowers amongst little yellow flowers.

They are so small yet when taken into account

They add color to the world.

Then a brown and orange butterfly comes along the

Colorful flowers and reminds me of God's doing in all of this,

Because after all He is the great creator of all that

I see before me.

The birds talking speak to each other

The leafs speaking through the winds passing through them

The sky a color blue that illuminates the

Message that in this moment

God is delighted that I see creation the way He sees it.

I imagine God laying next to me as I lay there on that small hill of grass.

Its like He's pointing out how much creation has grown since

He first made that place.

It's such a sweet moment that God and I have, one that I would not

Trade for the world.

His creation sings out His praise every day,

And every day I am blessed to encounter it.

Six Recognitions of the Lord

When I first started reading the poems written by Mary Oliver I was so overwhelmed with emotion as I read the eloquent words that she poured out from her heart. She is very talented in what words she puts together when she writes. Its like her vision becomes words and she has no problem describing God creativity that it almost makes me jealous that I can't find words like her. But I enjoy the fact that I get to read the words that she describes God's creation with.

In her poem of Six Recognitions of the Lord she is describing her view of the world and God's creation and it's so nicely written. In the beginning she opens with the fact that she has the ability to use fancy words but she doesn't want to, she just wants to speak to God through her words from her heart.

Section 5 was my favorite because they are words that ring true in my heart. It says:

"Oh, feed me this day, Holy Spirit, with

the fragrance of the fields and the

freshness of the oceans which you have

made, and help me to hear and to hold

in all dearness those exacting and wonderful

words of our Lord Christ Jesus, saying:

Follow me."

Its talking about the creation of the Earth around us reminding us of God's words that we should hold dear to our hearts. And how we want creation (or the Holy Spirit) to remind us of those words which are simply to follow God. These are words that I would use to describe the sunset that I so often see and the stars in the dark night that light up my heart. My Lord has put them there to testify to His greatness and to remind me to follow Him. It's such a sweet thing to be reminded and such a sweet way of reminding us. God is the one that tells the sun when to rise, and He tells the moon where to hide as the sun comes up. He has placed every star in the exact position that it sits in the midnight sky and he ordains all the scenery that we see. He blesses us so much through all of this and I can’t thank Him enough for every time I see all of His creations in different lights.

State of the Planet

Reading this poem really put things into perspective for me as I read it.

"It must be a gift of evolution that humans

Can't sustain wonder. We'd never have gotten up

From our knees if we could. But soon enough

We'd have fashioned sexy little earrings from the feathers,

Highlighted our cheekbones by rubbings from the rock,

And made a spear from the sinewy wood of the tree."

This part of the poem was the part that stuck out the most for me. As I read it I thought about all the things we use from nature that we really could do without. How much of nature do we take for granted when we could just use more natural ways of doing things; such as the earrings and the makeup that we women use? I wouldn't classify myself as a person that is supper animal activist and all but at the same time I think we need to be careful how we treat our natural habitats because this is what God has given us to live amongst. If we keep going around and abusing the Earth that He gave us then what is going to be left over? Nothing but the remainder of what we have trashed. Just as we are to take care of our temples that are on loan from God, we are to take care of the Earth that He has given us to live on also. This means treating His creation with the utmost respect that it deserves and to make sure we take care of the Earth we live in. It’s an interesting thought when you think about the global warming that people talk about and how some think we are slowly killing our world and how some don't even believe in it. I can't say I'm totally sold on the topic but I do feel like we could treat the world God has given us to live in a little better than we do treat it. Even all this 'Go Green' campaigning that they are doing, I think that is making our world a better place and a more healthy Earth for us to live in.

Short story/Characterization

The last post that I created was so different for me to do. I struggled to start the short story and I actually wrote the first paragraph or so on one day but then came back to it another day and finished the rest of the story. It was interesting because in the chapter that we read that talked about characterization it posed the thought of who really writes the story? Does the author dictate what the character does or does the character tell the author what they do? As I began writing the story for the last post I found myself letting the character tell me what was going on, which to me was weird. I really had it in my mind that as the author of the story we dictate everything but it was different writing the story from the characters point of view and interpreting the story through their eyes.

I really enjoyed writing the short story because it's not something that I do on a regular basis. I usually don't write short stories at all because I think I'm just a mediocre writer so I don't send a lot of time on writing. But writing this story was fun for me and I liked being creative like I was. I think my story even came out better than I intended it to be. Like I've said before, when we are growing up we don't think that much about how deep the characters make the story or how much they impact the story. And not so much just the characters in general but more so the different characters and what type of characters they are; whether that be flat, round, dynamic or such. It really puts even more depth to the story for the characters to be unique in their characteristics and adds color to the story. I think a lot of us really only read stories that have color to them and that is (the majority of the time) the main way authors try to write. And often it's the stories that we read and buy so it's beneifical that we learn to write like this in school.

Special Post #1

She walked in thinking to herself, ‘what am I doing here? There’s no reason for me to be here..’ but there was a reason for her to be there, whether she knew the reason herself or didn’t. It seemed like everyone else knew why she was there but they wouldn’t tell her or even give her a hint of why she was there. The room was draped in what seemed to be thoughts of the future but she couldn’t tell why there was so much emphasis on the future. She was a young lady that had her entire life ahead of her but wanted to just simply live in the moment. She didn’t like thinking about the future in fear of missing the joy in a present moment. She wanted nothing to do with retirement plans but rather was a more free spirit kind of person and just went where ever the wind blew her.

The people all around her seemed to be planning out the future without any hesitation. They were planning out next year internships, next seasons sporting events, even next week’s Friday night outing. All she wanted to think about was who she was hanging out with for the night. She wanted to be care free in the moment, but according to the others around her she must choose now what she would do with her time.

She grew up believing that the world was at her fingertips if only she would reach out and touch the unimaginable than it would all come true. Her Daddy had told her to reach for the stars and never look back on this place she had once called home. Her ‘home’ had many dark places that she didn’t want to remember. From all this darkness her Daddy pushed her towards the light which was anywhere but where she had grown up. He wanted her to grow up and be something, be more than he was or her mother was, he wanted the world for her and could only push her to be what she wanted to be. He had pushed her to be in this place where she was now. A place where people wore finely pressed suits, or at least they looked like suits. A place where they spoke at a higher intelligence level and if you weren’t on their level than you needed to go elsewhere because you weren’t going to make it in their group. She wanted to just go home. She didn’t care how dark her home was, it was her home and the only place she had ever known. But she also trusted her Daddy, and if he was pushing her to get her out of that place and onto a new life than she was going to trust him and follow where he pushed her to go.

As she sat down she looked for someone to sit next to her but then realized that the speaker had begun. Even the speaker was neatly pressed like he stepped out of a magazine they had just air brushed. She tried to ignore that and listen to what the speaker had to say, except for the people in front of her were only consumed with their personal conversation so that’s all she could hear at the moment. She decided to stand up in the back of the room, partly so she could hear and partly because the man at the podium had a voice like Charley Brown’s teacher and she had been traveling all night long so it was all she could do to stay awake.

She wondered when she could get out and meet people around the area because in this room there was only enough room to move when people stopped their judgmental stares and their deceitful lips from moving. Finally the speaker paused and what she thought would be her escape was actually her open door to the new world her Daddy had been pushing her towards. A lady by the name of Ms. Philange asked her to step outside, to which the girl responded timidly because she felt like she had done something wrong. Ms. Philange, only an inch taller than herself with dark circles under her eyes like she had been up since the 1800s, began to tell her she had seen her walk in and wanted to introduce herself. This woman was strange to the girl but she decided to go with it and give the lady a chance. As she spoke to the girl, all she could think about was the time that her kindergarten teacher brought in a guest speaker to talk about some fundraiser and it seemed as though she only acknowledged her out of the entire classroom. The girl got the feeling that she was no longer proceeding to her open door, rather she felt she was receding, and wished she really had been, back to the seat where the girls in front of her couldn’t stop spilling their guts about which cute guy they would talk to first.

Ms. Philange continued on about some blabber blabber about the facilities, to which the girl responded, “I’m sorry, am I supposed to be taking notes?” Ms. Philange gave the girl a look like she needed to learn some manners but the girl was being serious. Why was this lady talking to her like she was in first grade? She had been minding her own business and not bothering anyone. In actuality the girls in front of her should have been being talked to because they were the ones that really needed to be talked to. Just then another girl came up and screamed “Anna!!!” The girl just looked at her and decided to go along with it as she screamed back, “Jessica!! How great it is to see you??” She didn’t know the girl a day in her life but for some reason there was a sense of understanding her pain as she stood there and listened to Ms. Philange go on and on. The other girl began to tell Ms. Philange that she was so glad that she had found her friend she had been looking for all day and that she would take her from here and give her a proper tour of the facilities. Ms. Philange just stared aimlessly as the girls trotted off into the new world that the girls’ father had so badly longed for her to be a part of. This was finally the start that the girl had been searching for and she couldn’t wait to call her father and tell him every detail of the day, especially about the new world she had now discovered through his persistence of a better life for her.

Character

While reading this chapter, all that I could think of was back in elementary school and going into middle school how we learn about all these terms talked about in the chapter. We learn about the protagonist, antagonist, and hero and on and on and on. We learn the plot and the climax and all that as well which all is put together as a story. We are drilled to learn about it all so we can read better and understand the text better. By understanding these terms we can identify what is what and who plays what role. But the chapter expounds more on character than what we are taught in middle school. We are taught that there are different kinds of characters and they all add differently to the text which makes the story interesting. You love some characters because of the way they are presented and you hate some of them because of the way they are presented. But do we ever stop to think (like the author of chapter 2 talks about) does the character make the story or does the story make the character?? This thought was rather interesting to me because I guess I never stopped to think about it. I started to think about all the books and stories I have read and keep thinking, which one would this story apply to? Did the character make the story or did the story make the character? I would almost say it depends on the author and how they write the story. Nicholas Sparks writes books, in my opinion, where the characters make the story. But in Sonny's Blues, the author writes it as the story makes the characters; you don't realize who the characters really are until the author presents them through the story. So in my opinion it really does depend on the author and how they write the story. And sometimes it even depends on how we read a story I think. If we have knowledge on the story than we might already know a little about the characters and then in this case the characters make the story. For example trilogies or books that continue into other books would fall into this category. Interesting thoughts when thinking about literature and reading about the stories/characters we are interacting with.

Sonny's Blues

This story that we read was something that I was not expecting. It started out with a man narrating about his day of reading in the news paper that his brother had been taken to jail for drugs. This is certainly not something that a person wants to read at any point of their life, especially being an older brother. And to top that, one of his brother's friends came by to make sure he had heard the news. The narrator is someone that I commend for taking responsibility for not only his life and his family but also before his mother died he promised her to take care of his brother Sonny, so to see this in the papers that his brother has taken this road of falling to drugs is somewhat a failure on his part in his mind almost. So the story then goes through the path of Sonny getting back in touch with his brother after many years and reconnecting with him and telling him about his life.

While reading this story I didn't realize things until a certain point in the reading. The author almost keeps some things under wraps until certain points in the reading. I didn’t 't realize the boys were blood brothers till a few pages into the readings, or that they were African American until a few pages in. Then the author unfolds the brother's relationship as the text keeps going on which is how I love reading text. I like the way the author starts in the middle of the narrators' day and slowly unfolds the details of the story. This keeps you wondering what this happened for or why they said that. What memory does that go back to, or why are they acting like that? This kind of reading keeps me enticed and wanting to read on until I get the full story, I love it!