dear Focus on the Family, Fantine was a prostitute.

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dear Focus on the Family,

I want to ask you about shame. I want to ask you about the way you dug your hands into a big pail of soapy water and scrubbed away at the dirt that is humanity.

and then I will press the play button on that ancient cassette player and let you listen to the words you wrote down on a piece of paper and handed to a woman to read as she voiced the role of Fatine in your radio drama recording of Les Miserables. 

and then I want to ask you more about Fantine. they called her a prostitute in that alley and she was appalled. you could hear it in her voice, the way she spit the last syllable of her accused profession. "I am not a prostitute," she snaps.

except she was. and you changed it.

did you think you were doing her a favor, tidying her up and making her presentable for the hordes of Christian listeners that would be gathering around their listening devices with their children and their grandparents. did you want to make it easy for them not to answer questions from inquiring little mouths :: daddy, what's a prostitute? 

but really, you did Fatine a disservice. and in the process, you did us all one, too.

Van Jean saves her, gathers her fever-riddled body into his arms, vows to tend to her little girl. the story is beautiful, yes. but it was beautiful the way it was. in fact, it was better before you changed this important detail. 

she is worthy of saving because of her humanity. does supposed morality make her worthy somehow? does her profession of sex worker make her less allowable? or does it make you uncomfortable? that idea that Jean Val Jean, Prisoner 24601, gathers into his arms the body of a woman who has slept with countless men for the money they press into her palm -- does it make you clear your throat and side-step the issue?

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obviously it does. because you took it away. you made her fragile and moral, a newly made virginal woman with a child from long-repented sin, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

what then do you do with this Man, Jesus, as he reached out his hands to the naked woman flung into the dirt with pointed fingers from Pharisees? will you scrub her clean, too, until she is covered from neck to toes with a cloak and pretend no one knows what's underneath?

to love another person is to see the face of God. 

{les miserables}

because when you take away Fantine being a prostitute, you take away the Gospel-glory that clings to the edges of everything. you take away the holy breathing of the One who speaks Life over the gory and the broken and the smelly and the base. He takes the sh***y and pitches His tent there.

so, Focus on the Family, Fantine was a prostitute.
and the glory in that is immeasurable.

Rêve

I dreamed a dream in time gone by / When hope was high / And life worth living / I dreamed that love would never die / I dreamed that God would be forgiving / Then I was young and unafraid / And dreams were made and used and wasted / There was no ransom to be paid / No song unsung, no wine untasted... ~I Dreamed A Dream, Les Miserables

I dream a lot. 

It's something I've dealt with ever since I was about four years old, and I discovered books. 

It was like a door burst open in my soul...I found myself entirely unable to reign in my imagination. 

Since then, I have come to my own conclusion.

Everyone's a dreamer.

We all have our secret longings, whether we're willing to admit them or not.

Some of us are more expressive with our dreams. We write bucket lists, pouring our innermost longings into our imaginings, be they exceptionally easy or intensely complicated to achieve.

They are all different, depending on the dreamer, but every wish and every heartcry has one thing in common.

There is passion locked behind each and every dream.

Maybe it's something we found in the pages of a book, a winding forest path lined with fairies and mysterious flowers found nowhere else.

Or perhaps it's something we were born to explore...a familial heritage that we too seek to achieve. 

 

Regardless of the dream, no matter what the wish may be, there is one thing that remains the same. 

Your way is secure. 

Your path is laid by the hand of the ultimate Waymaker, the One who sets the world to turning.

He sees your heart and knows your dreams.  

So don't be afraid. 

Rest. 

Be still.  

Embrace the silence.

Let go

and dream. 

“Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.” ~Ephesians 4:20

(Also, don't forget about the giveaway. Only ten days left to enter to win some beautiful jewelry.)
(Guest posting here this week!)

Freedom

Do you hear the people sing? / Singing a song of angry men? / It is the music of a people / Who will not be slaves again! / When the beating of your heart / Echoes the beating of the drums. / There is a life about to start /When tomorrow comes! ~When Tomorrow Comes, Les Miserables

4th of July. 

To the rest of the world, this is just another day on the calender. No different than the 9th of March or the 24th of October. 

But to the United States of America, this day is monumental. 

Today we declared our freedom. 

Today we stood against the background of red, white, and blue, and took our place among the nations. 

We stepped from black and white to colour...from darkness to light...from candlelight to sparklers. 

We became the United States of America. 

But now, we are starting to fall back into our own habits. 

We are slipping from the light of freedom to the darkness of our own slavery.

We are not under the dominion of the King of England anymore...but nor are we allowing ourselves to be under the reign of the ultimate Holy King. We have switched from rebelling against the laws of man to pushing our backs against the laws of God. 

We have fallen so in love with freedom that we have fallen out of love with the One who held our hands and guided us here in the first place. 

If we try to erase God from every cornerstone of our nation's foundation, we will grind the stones to nothing and leave us in a pile of rubble.

Lives were lost and the streams ran red with blood to make our country free.

One life was lost and His heart was pierced to make our souls free.

We must never separate the two. 

If these two threads untangle, our freedom will unravel. 

"One nation under God." 

Photo by Abigail Dahl
PinkStudios Photography

In Him, we are free. 

Without Him, we are lost. 

So tonight,as lemonade mingles with the ice cubes in our glasses and watermelon juice drips down your chin...

...as the anthem plays and the star-spangled banner flutters in the breeze... 

...as sparklers flash and fireworks explode against the backdrop of the midnight sky...

...never forget the ones who died to give us this freedom, and never forget the One who died to give us the ultimate freedom.

Embrace your freedom,

but cling to Him.  

Do you hear the people sing? / Lost in the valley of the night / It is the music of a people who are climbing to the light / For the wretched of the earth there is a flame that never dies / Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise. / They will live again in freedom in the garden of the Lord. / They will walk behind the plough-share / they will put away the sword. / The chain will be broken and all men will have their reward...~Epilogue, Les Miserables 

(I did a guest post today over at The Cupcake Dictionary, which you can read here.)

Las Gotas de Lluvia (Drops of Rain)

Don't you fret, M'sieur Marius / I don't feel any pain / A little fall of rain / Can hardly hurt me now / You're here, that's all I need to know / And you will keep me safe / And you will keep me close / And rain / will make the flowers grow. ~Les Miserables, Little Fall of Rain

It's raining.

Again.

While I can't say that I don't love the soft kiss of rain on my face or on the pattering of moisture on my windowpane...

...I'm starting to be a bit fed up with all this rain.

The weather has been nothing but unusual in this part of the world...raining one moment, beautiful blue sky the next.

I think it's feeling as off-kilter and strange as I myself have felt recently.

One minute, my skies are grey...broken...tears flowing as steady as Midwestern rain.

The next, the clouds break and my soul is flooded with a strange sort of joy, as though the windshield wipers of my heart have been turned on, and my vision clears again.

It's odd, to be sure.

Maybe I should go to Narnia, as I've always planned...

...and ask Aslan to turn me into a nyad or a dryad, one of the tree or water nymphs.

It might be a nice change...

...to weave my hair with rose petals and ivy vines...

...or to wear water droplets like nature's diamonds about my neck...

...to clad myself in a gown of clouds...

...to wander barefoot through the softest grass that merges with my soul.

Perhaps I shouldn't complain about the weather so much.

Maybe I need to just embrace it.

Love it.

Wear it.

Take it into my soul and breathe it into my lungs.

I think I shall leap into puddles,

and make a necklace out of raindrops.

The best kind of rain, of course, is a cozy rain. This is the kind the anonymous medieval poet makes me remember, the rain that falls on a day when you'd just as soon stay in bed a little longer, write letters or read a good book by the fire, take early tea with hot scones and jam and look out the streaked window with complacency. ~Susan Allen Toth