Category: faith

I Want To Dance With A Kangaroo

On By Rebekka LienIn art, beautiful, faith, Fashion, Music2 Comments

I am flying again!!

In 3 weeks or so, I’ll be jetting to Australia! I know! My life is so exciting!!

I’ll be there from 9/11- 10/11 and I’ll be going to several cities- for sure Sydney and Melbourne.

Some things of TO DO’s ON MY LIST:

1. Connect with like minded people, artists, musicians, dancers, creative minds, cool people like you.

2. Dance with a kangaroo

3. Shuffle at a rave (I know I’m lame, apparently people who shuffle in Australia are 15-17 year old boys and girls….and I’m 23)

4. Meet some life long friends- yes, like the type that you talk to more than once a month, or once in two months, friends that I can definitely call – SOUL MATES as they would call it.

5. Buy some really cool and unique swag not found in the US.

6. Meet and contact some folks through twitter/tumblr. This is my most exciting project!!! I think this will trip everyone out.

Re-Thinking Reality

On By Rebekka LienIn art, faith, God, person i want to beLeave a comment

Look, I’m not asking you to become someone else. 

I’m asking you to think about why you do what you do.

Why do you laugh at “rape jokes”, make fun of women with flat boobs, why do you, though contrary to what you want to do, not stand up for what’s right. Because you know, you would never talk about your mom or sister like that.

How about this- why do you idolize celebrities? What is in their life that you don’t have? Is it money? Is it fame? Is it clothes? Why do we idolize them as though they are more than human? Goddesses and Gods?

How about this- why do you go to school, good schools, to get good jobs, to earn lots of money, to retire? Why do we do that? Is there any real meaning in life? And what is it?

I can say that, walking the path of “re-thinking my reality” was not easy. First, I had to be bullied when I moved to America, because I was foreign and from another country. I was Asian, so I was called “fob” even though I was born in Germany. I spoke little English, wore weird clothes and never fit in like the rest of society. I was a creature from Mars. Many of my acquaintances will testify of that, actually some of them are even my Facebook friends now (some who once bullied me).

So then, I could never really fit in, because I was already born in Germany, lived in Taiwan, and spoke little English- and physically, I wore weird clothes, everything added together was like….one big PROOF that I just did not fit in.

However, because I didn’t fit in, I was able to bubble my thoughts away from mainstream, conformist thought. I was able to think clearly in my room, walk observantly amongst crowds of conforming middle schoolers, and become my own “freak” of sorts. I re-thought my reality and became in tune with God who created me this way. I began to realize that perhaps I wasn’t that unwanted, that hated, that unloved, that outcasted…perhaps I really did have a home, a God who loves me.

That love came, poured, all over my life. In the worst of heartbreaks, turmoil, poverty, and suppression. Broke free and gave me freedom to be the woman I am today.

This is the same freedom I hope that each person I ever bump into will live in. This is the same freedom I want to give to every abused woman, survivor, victim of human trafficking, home, community. I was freed to free others.

I had a dream yesterday, 9/11 I will either be in another country or going to Asia to work with organizations that fight human trafficking. It’s going to happen.

Interdependence and Independence

On By Rebekka LienIn beautiful, faith, God, person i want to be, psychology, self- reflectionLeave a comment

Recently I have gone to great extents to fathom and comprehend the concepts of reliance and independence. Or more so, independence vs. interdependence. Independence meaning you are able to live by yourself, not be dependent on parents/friends, interdependence moving back and forth between depending and being independent (the healthy way). I’ll just write a poem since it is easier for me.

Dance, music, limelights, she stands alone wondering where her other half is.

Her sublime sadness provokes me to madness. Can this really be? That one cannot enjoy oneself?

Although I am able to enjoy myself meeting new friends, I cannot but feel a bit of sympathy.

Co-dependency has united the two. They have destroyed any possibility of independence or interdependence. Once capture by a net of security her parents provided, she is once again captivated by his golden locks. He keeps you stagnant, she said. I said, where has your business gone? Where has your dreams of shops and sweets gone? A life once sparked with future, now crumbling into ashes.

Boundaries. Distance. Separating myself.  I don’t know what co-dependence means nor independence. It’s a weak thing I deem to be unable to enjoy oneself without their other half. I would think that a healthy relationship allows space for growth, apart from each other. But I find myself amidst situations of friendships where friends depend on their partners for happiness. Dependence I think is different from “addition”. I think partners should give you an addition of happiness, a bonus of life. Though what I have observed in my surroundings is that without their partners, they seem to be unable to enjoy happiness.

So I keep observing. Kind of sad. Not knowing whether what I feel is legitimate. Whether this is just part of life, or realizing that once again, maybe friends are just that fragile. Friendship can be distanced and broken because of someone finding their partner. I think maybe I just need to grieve for myself, just a little longer. Or maybe I should rejoice because all my friends can now live without my help. I can now move on, emotionally and physically, moving into another country, another culture, another arena of friendship.

Maybe maybe, I should allow myself to be, to feel whatever I feel. To grieve and be sad. To realize another chapter of my life has closed and another has come. I’m a little shaken, a little teary eyed. But I’ll be sad and happy. Happy for them, happy for me. Sad for them, sad for me. Bittersweet herbs renewing visions. I’ll move on, carrying those memories in my heart. Because once again, I’ll be surprised by the friendships God will bring forth to me. Life is just like that, looking back in reminiscence, and learning to look forward in anticipation and hope.

Truth, Rain, Running

On By Rebekka LienIn faithLeave a comment

I woke up and actually got 7 hours of sleep. Bravo! Instead of 10 hours lately. I decided to go for a run, since I’ve been eating vegan cookies, sandwiches, and hot tea, hot coco, hot coffee. The air was amazingly crisp.

As I started stretching, I thought this: when you are standing still in the cold, after the rain, you get…well cold. However, if you continue running, say in the rain, you keep warm. So it is in life.

As I looked around the plants I was running by, I thought another. It is amazing how people only believe in the facts of science and not the facts of our spiritual condition. Especially, when it comes to grace. The grace that Christ extends to us.

People choose to believe in everything that “authorities and PhD’s” claim to be true because it has nothing to do with the observance (truth) of themselves. Yes, it can be about how H2O reacts with Carbon, about how yeast rises in bread, about the anatomy of human beings, about how animals move, about space, about computer systems, about human resources, about business, but ANYTHING TO DO WITH FACING OUR TRUE SELVES, people will run away.

It can even be meditating so that you forget about yourself, it can be new age and feeling like you are one with the universe, it can be even doing good works and charity to cover up the fact that we are weak and sinful- and thus trying to work our way towards heaven, it can be doing voodoo and cursing other people, it can be forever being angry, it can be horoscopes- trying to predict each day of our lives…..

However, we are then forever escaping truth and the reality and conditions of our hearts and souls. That we are depraved in every way, that we are unable ourselves to be good, that we are, as much as people hate this word, sinful. To look ourselves in the mirror of our hearts is, I believe, one of the most terrifying things on earth.

And maybe that’s why I have found truth in Jesus Christ. I am not religious, I don’t smack people on the head with scripture or doctrine. This is the only truth I know that allows us to see ourselves as we REALLY are, and the God who actually forgives and embraces us just as we are. No trying to do good works, no trying to be better.

That comes later, as the power enters us and allows us to love- unconditionally just as we have accepted unconditional love.

I am just like everyone else, but I have accepted the gift of grace and given up on the fact that I myself can achieve anything good, or be any good. But when I accepted that, I really did gain everything in the world- wisdom, love, peace, truth, power, rest, a supernatural change that compelled me to give up everything I held onto; everything that yielded death and false security.

Blessed is the man who finds wisdom,
the man who gains understanding,

14 for she is more profitable than silver
and yields better returns than gold.

15 She is more precious than rubies;
nothing you desire can compare with her.

16 Long life is in her right hand;
in her left hand are riches and honor.

17 Her ways are pleasant ways,
and all her paths are peace.

18 She is a tree of life to those who embrace her;
those who lay hold of her will be blessed.

19 By wisdom the LORD laid the earth’s foundations,
by understanding he set the heavens in place;

20 by his knowledge the deeps were divided,
and the clouds let drop the dew.

proverbs 3

It depends on what God you’re talking about

On By Rebekka LienIn faith3 Comments

“Was Jesus God?” by Mark Strom

N.T. Wright responded, “Well, it depends on what God you’re talking about.”

Because most people when they talk about God talk of some capricious, removed, abstract being somewhere who throws rocks, who doesn’t get connected or involved.

“If that is God, then ‘No’ Jesus was not God.” But this is the wonder of the Gospel, it turns the question around: What kind of God could become Jesus?

Don’t start with God in the abstract, but with Jesus in the concrete.

What kind of God could actually be Jesus?

This God could put on eyebrows and kneecaps, tear ducts and saliva glands. This God could be born under the tyrants Augustus and Herod. This God could accept the smells of shepherds and the extravagancies of political emissaries. This God could grow up under foreign domination, and among terrorists and outcasts. This God could start life off a hunted vulnerable child born into scandal. This God could sit in the street playing marbles. This God could wear with pride the calloused splintered hands of an honest workman building the houses and fixing the furniture of half casts, outcasts, and bigots. This God could ask his cousin to baptize him along with the rest of the crowd.

This God could make the best vintage Pinot Noir or Cabernet Sauvignon even when the guests were too drunk to know the difference. This God could befriend a bloke in a tree with “small man’s syndrome.” This God could enjoy a woman of questionable character washing his feet giving her his full and undivided attention and ignoring the eye rolling of lawyers and theologians. This God could spend a whole night making a whip to crack over the backs of con-artists who rip off the poor. This God could wrap the greatest truths in the simplest stories and put a sting in the tail of every yarn. This God could let himself hang on a tree, nails tearing at his sinews, blood, faeces, and urine running down his legs. This God could invite women to be the first to know that he was back. This God could delay his own glorious homecoming long enough for a bite of breakfast on the beach… with an old friend to let him know that there were no hard feelings and to pass along his mantle. This God could take his own story and give it the most surprising ending.

This God, this God is worth knowing. This God could reach into the crevasses of my soul to bring to life the longings I smother so pathetically and recklessly with shame and excuses. This God could raise me up to life with Him. This God could give me every blessing that he could give himself. This God could draw me out of my petty self-interest without a hint of a tut-tut, a frown, or a patronizing smile. This God could me more infuriating and fascinating and gobsmaking than any God that I could ever make up. This God could love my obsessiveness and overlook my forgetfulness. This God could laugh and cry with me and come play with me. This God could make me His glory. This God could love me. This God could trust me. This God could never be safe, but always be good. This God is worth knowing. This God I want to know. This God I know in the face and the spirit of Jesus.