I'll hop on the Deschanel train this time.
Happy New Years!

"People always seem to think if they dress like a revolutionary they don't actually have to behave like one."

- Banksy in Banksy: Wall and Piece p.47

Top notch animation.

"Policemen and security guards wear hats with a peak that comes down low over their eyes for psychological reasons. Apparently eyebrows are very expressive and by covering them up you appear a lot more authoritative. The upside is this means it's harder for cops to see anything more than six foot off the ground and maks painting rooftops and bridges a lot easier."

- Banksy in Banksy: Wall and Piece p.42

The capabilities of the human body never cease to astound me.

"There are no exceptions to the rule that everyone thinks they're an exception to the rules."

- Banksy in Banksy: Wall and Piece p.32

A few days late for Christmas, but deal with it.

"I got home at last and crawled into bed next to my girlfriend. I told her I'd had an epiphany that night and she told me to stop taking that drug 'cos it's bad for your heart."

- Banksy in Banksy: Wall and Piece p.13

Ryan Gosling, is there anything you can't do?

"The people who truly deface our neighbourhoods are the companies that scrawl giant slogans across buildings and buses trying to make us feel inadequate unless we buy their stuff. The expect to be able to shout their message in your face from every available surface but you're never allowed to answer back."

 - Banksy in Banksy: Wall and Piece p.8

My sister got me Banksy's book Banksy:Wall and Piece for Christmas and while it is primarily a picture book, he has some great quotes in it. I'll be posting my favourite excerpts here, but you'll have to get the book yourself to see all the incredible art in it!

Here's some simply beautiful music for St. Stephen's Day.

I hate doing stippling, but love looking at it!

Summer anyone?

If you haven't picked up on it from all the Searching for God Knows What, A Thousand Miles in a Million Years and Blue Like Jazz quotes, I'm a big Donald Miller fan. Just yesterday, I picked up Through Painted Deserts. I also picked up a copy of St. Augustine's Confessions mainly because John Piper once said:

"I don't think we ought to be reading new books all the time. I think we should read old books. And then the question is whether time and history has proven them. There are some books that have been around forever, and they are, generation after generation, witnessed to as being very shaping to people's lives. So I think we should constantly be exposing ourselves to those classics and not always reading the latest thing."

I dig Miller's style and value his insights, but I need to gain a deeper appreciation for the works of our Christian forefathers that shaped our current faith and have stood the test of time!

That was all a rabbit trail, back to Don Miller. I also follow his blog and, today, he wrote a few observations of a TED talk by a woman named Brene Brown titled The Power of Vulnerability. Here are a few things that I took from Miller than he took from Brown:

1. We are here to connect. It’s hardwired into our biology. It’s the driving force in the human personality.
2. People who have a strong sense of love and belonging BELIEVE THEY ARE WORTHY OF LOVE AND BELONGING.
3. Connected people believe that what makes them vulnerable makes them beautiful. Connected people are willing to say “I love you” first and to take relational risks. They are willing to get hurt. This is fundamental to a connected person.
4. We numb vulnerability because it scares us. We overeat, drink and escape the risks involved in actually connecting with other human beings. Connected people don’t numb vulnerability.

I like to think that I'm a connected person and I embrace my vulnerability.
Read his whole blog here and watch the video here.

"we should tell people about Jesus, not try to build some kind of temporary moral civilization here on earth. If you want that, move to Salt Lake City."

- Donald Miller in Searching for God Knows What p.188

Adorkable.

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

 - Kurt Vonnegut

"A god who says everybody can do as they please would be a bad god, a bad father, giving license for anarchy. Love creates rules, and forgives when they are broken."

- Donald Miller in Searching for God Knows What p.181

I need spring rugby to come fast!

"These days you get guys who say they are God, and the only people who believe them are the ones who are brainwashed by them in the first place. And even then the guys who say they are God always want to sleep with everybody's wife and live on an island and drink a lot of punch and drive expensive cars and do crazy stuff that pretty much proves they aren't God."

- Donald Miller in Searching for God Knows What p.141

So if you know me at all, you've probably picked up that I'm a fan of the rustic vibe. I would LOVE my house to be similar to the below photos some day!

Thanks Ashley for finding these!

"I know men; and I tell you that Jesus Christ is no mere man. Between Him and every other person in the world there is no possible term of comparison. Alexander, Caeser, Charlemange, and I have founded empires. But on what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force! Jesus Christ founded His empire upon love; and at this hour millions o men would die for Him."

- Napoleon

Ouch.

"Greene indicated the possibility that multiple dimensions may be laid out against each other as slices of a loaf of bread or tissues in a great brain. And while distantly scientific (strings are too small to actually see and prove scientifically and have been seen only through mathematical formulas), the theory had me pondering about the greatness or I should say the otherness, of God. I began to wonder how odd it would be if we existed in the mind of God, as Brian Greene, perhaps unknowingly, suggests. I am not saying I believe this is true, but something as radical as this, as foreign to our minds, certainly may be. And out of this other place, this existence, Christ stepped to inhabit ours."

- Donald Miller in Searching for God Knows What p.122

I like graffiti a lot. And even more when it comes to life!

"One day, Kelley McRae and her husband Matt decided to pack up all their earthly belongings and hit the open road traveling and singing up and down the east coast."

 - Matt Addington in The Duck Duck Collective's blog post about Kelley 

 While on the topic, check Kelley McRae out here.

My friend Prisca is currently over in SE Asia working/taking photos at an orphanage for a month. She was online for a few minutes the other day and I snagged the opportunity to chat with her. I asked her how things were going and her simple response was:

 "the kids give the tightest hugs and never let go!"

"I know this makes God sound like a terrible narcissist, but my friend John MacMurray said to me recently that the most selfless thing God could do, that is, the most selfless thing a perfect Being who is perfectly loving could do, would be to create other beings to enjoy Himself."

- Donald Miller in Searching for God Knows What p.108

Just plain grogeous.

"This I declare about the LORD:
 He alone is my refuge, my place of safety;
 he is my God, and I trust him."

- Psalm 91:2

60% of The Fortress wishes you a Merry Christmas!

Relationships are messy and they hurt.
This said, they're completely worth it.

"I'm going to spend the next week or so assuming people want to talk to me. This is the main reason I don't reach out, because I assume I'm a bother. Or a drain. But there's little evidence of this. If my friends are a gift to me, why can't I be a gift to them? How would the world change if each time we walked through a door we felt as though we'd stepped off the lowered hand of God, given from Him, to the home we are about to enter."

- Don Miller in What Would Change if You Believed People Actually Wanted to Talk to You?

"Teach us to realize the brevity of life,
so that we may grow in wisdom."

- Psalm 90:12

"I know this makes God sound like a terrible narcissist, but my friend John MacMurray said to me recently that the most selfless thing God could do, that is, the most selfless thing a perfect Being who is perfectly loving could do, would be to create other beings to enjoy Himself."

- Donald Miller in Searching for God Knows What p.108

Never before have I felt so inadequate in absolutely everything.

"God has no problems and cannot be confused; therefore, I know that the Spirit in me is my freedom. There is no bondage in God, consequently I am not afraid. There is no confusion in the Divine Mind and I now realize that my mind is one with the Divine. I endeavor to see the answer to every problem instead of the problem. Instead of looking at confusion I now observe peace at the center of every situation.

Ever thought of fear or limitation is removed from my consciousness. I maintain a good-natured flexibility with myself, playing the game of life with deep sincerity but with spontaneity. I enter into my inheritance quietly but with great enthusiasm. I refute every sense of duality and see God in everything. Right now I completely accept Life in Its fullness."

- p.43 of an unknown book

"War is awful. I don't know whether it is right or wrong, what we did to Japan, but I know it was awful. I realize it ended the war, and I know it saved lives in the long run, and I know about Hitler, and I know Japan wanted half the world, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't mourn war anyway, that doesn't mean we shouldn't feel grief at the terrible ways conflicts are negotiated in a world absent God."

- Donald Miller in Searching for God Knows What p.79

Such a great song and video to boot!

"My health may fail, and my spirit may grow weak, but God remains the strength of my heart; He is mine forever."

- Psalm 73:26 (NLT)

Now I want to learn how to ski.

“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends. To appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”

 - Ralph Waldo Emerson

I want this dog.
Or just a german shepard in general.

Music Monday!
Gotta love these two!
Skip to 1m48s for the song to actually start.

High Speed Cameras are just more fun.

Happy first day of December and 24 days until I turn 23!