Ellen Husted, nursing student, Azusa Pacific University

Ellen and Hiba

Journal entries from my time in Israel at Shevet Achim:

Rudyard Kipling, “If”

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foe nor loving friend can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

When you told me that you loved me, you didn’t whisper it in the dark; you wrote it in the sky.

O light that followest all my way, 
I yield my flickering torch to thee; 
My heart restores its borrowed ray, 
That in thy sunshine’s blaze its day 
May brighter, fairer be.

Jesus cast a look on me, give me sweet simplicity.
Make me poor and keep my low, seeking only thee to know

For some it is down crosses and up umbrellas, but I am persuaded that we must take heaven with the wind and the rain in our faces. – Samuel Rutherford

God is the poet inside of my head.

There is a fire in my bones and a lion in my throat. – Ekam Sat

No one can tell me,

Nobody knows,

Where the wind comes from,

Where the wind goes.

It's flying from somewhere

As fast as it can,

I couldn't keep up with it,

Not if I ran.

But if I stopped holding

The string of my kite,

It would blow with the wind

For a day and a night.

And then when I found it,

Wherever it blew,

I should know that the wind

Had been going there too.

So then I could tell them

Where the wind goes…

But where the wind comes from

Nobody knows.

A. A. Milne

All great passions are born out of anguish – Dave Wilkerson.

Michelangelo, “Prisoner”

My song is love

Love to the loveless shown

And it goes on

You don't have to be alone

Your heavy heart

Is made of stone

And it's so hard to see you clearly

You don't have to be on your own

And I'm not gonna take it back

And I'm not gonna say, "I don't mean that"

You're the target that I'm aiming at

Got to get that message home

My song is love

My song is love, unknown

But I'm on fire for you, clearly

You don't have to be alone

You don't have to be on your own

And I'm not gonna take it back

And I'm not gonna say, "I don't mean that"

You're the target that I'm aiming at

And I'm nothing on my own

Got to get that message home

And I'm not gonna stand and wait

Not gonna leave it until it's much too late

On a platform I'm gonna stand and say

That I'm nothing on my own

And I love you, please come home

My song is love, is love unknown

And I've got to get that message home

-Coldplay, “The Message”

I heard a voice through the discord

A deluge of passersby

I saw one gaze frozen in time

Watching me passing by

And I swear I'll know your face in the crowd

And I'll hear your voice so loud

When you're whispering

Hey unfaithful I will teach you

To be stronger, to be stronger

Hey ungraceful I will teach you

To forgive one another.

Here's my kiss to betray (Kiss to betray)

Desperate to brush the lips of grace (Brush the lips of grace)

Do you feel hollow when you think of how I lied?

Oh sweet angel of mercy

With your grace like the morning

Wrap your loving arms around me

Oh sweet angel of mercy

With your grace like the morning

Wrap your loving arms around me

Hey unfaithful I will teach you

To be stronger, to be stronger

Hey ungraceful I will teach you

To forgive one another

Hey unfaithful I will teach you

To be stronger, to be stronger

Hey unloving

I will love you

And Jesus I'm ready to come home

Jesus, I'm ready to come home (home)

home (home)

I'm ready to come (home)

Hey Unfaithful

Hey Ungraceful

Hey Unloving

I will love you

Hey Unloving (Hey Unloving)

I will love you.

Underoath

Christ died for men precisely because men are not worth dying for; to make them worth it.

C.S. Lewis

"In speaking of this desire for our own far off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited."

C.S. Lewis

I will follow you into the dark.

Deathcab for Cutie

And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it, declares the Lord.

Ezekiel 37.14

Hell is empty and all the devils are here. -Shakespeare

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;

And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well

And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally,

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

John Donne

Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.

Shel Silverstein

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

Samuel Johnson

Silent saint; quietly going about kingdom business.

Man is born to live, not meant to prepare to live.

Boris Pasternak

THE LOOK:

Strephon kissed me in the spring, 

Robin in the fall, 

But Colin only looked at me 

And never kissed at all.

Strephon's kiss was lost in jest, 

Robin's lost in play, 

But the kiss in Colin's eyes 

Haunts me night and day.

Sara Teasdale

HOLY SONNETS: XIV.

Batter my heart, three-person'd God ; for you

As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ;

That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend

Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,

Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.

Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,

But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,

But am betroth'd unto your enemy ;

Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I,

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

John Donne

Omnia vincet amor,; et nos cadamus amori.

Love conquers all; let us too surrender to love.

St. Augustine

The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift,

The road is forlorn all day,

Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift,

And the hoof-prints vanish away.

The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee,

Expend their bloom in vain.

Come over the hills and far with me,

And be my love in the rain.

The birds have less to say for themselves

In the wood-world’s torn despair

Than now these numberless years the elves,

Although they are no less there:

All song of the woods is crushed like some

Wild, easily shattered rose.

Come, be my love in the wet woods; come,

Where the boughs rain when it blows.

There is the gale to urge behind

And bruit our singing down,

And the shallow waters aflutter with wind

From which to gather your gown.

What matter if we go clear to the west,

And come not through dry-shod?

For wilding brooch shall wet your breast

The rain-fresh goldenrod.

Oh, never this whelming east wind swells

But it seems like the sea’s return

To the ancient lands where it left the shells

Before the age of the fern;

And it seems like the time when after doubt

Our love came back amain.

Oh, come forth into the storm and rout

And be my love in the rain.

Robert Frost, “A line storm song”

I am a prisoner of hope.

Hey, hey, hey Your lipstick stains on the front lobe of my left side brains I knew I wouldn't forget you, and so I went and let you blow my mind Your sweet moon beam, the smell of you in every single dream I dream I knew when we collided, you're the one I have decided who's one of my kind  Hey soul sister, ain't that Mr. Mister on the radio, stereo, the way you move ain't fair, you know! Hey soul sister, I don't want to miss a single thing you do...tonight Hey, hey,hey  Just in time, I'm so glad you have a one-track mind like me You gave my life direction, a game show love connection we can't deny I'm so obsessed, my heart is bound to beat right out my untrimmed chest I believe in you, like a virgin, you're Madonna, and I'm always gonna wanna blow your mind  Hey soul sister, ain't that Mr. Mister on the radio, stereo, the way you move ain't fair, you know! Hey soul sister, I don't want to miss a single thing you do...tonight The way you can cut a rug, watching you's the only drug I need You're so gangsta, I'm so thug, you're the only one I'm dreaming of You see, I can be myself now finally, in fact there's nothing I can't be I want the world to see you be with me Hey soul sister, ain't that Mr. Mister on the radio, stereo, the way you move ain't fair, you know! Hey soul sister, I don't want to miss a single thing you do tonight, Hey soul sister, I don't want to miss a single thing you do...tonight Hey, hey,hey Tonight Hey, hey,hey Tonight

Hey Soul Sister, Train

The hero is no braver than the ordinary man; but he is brave for five minutes longer.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is not the critic who counts, or how the strongman stumbled and fell, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotion, and who spends himself in a worthy cause. If he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that he may never be one of those cold and timid souls, who know neither victory nor defeat.

Theodore Roosevelt

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