Goin to the chapel...

So I realized...I haven't written a post since getting engaged, and that was over six months ago. So the gist is, I'm getting married.  I will be adding another name to my own.  (Sometimes I wish Taylor did that too, but that's beside the point.)  I am taking one of the scariest steps in life--choosing who to spend it with.  I am more than ready and at the same time scared out of my skull.  But I think if I wasn't freaking out, I probably wouldn't be doing it right.  

One major reason to be a bit nervous: I'm finishing my senior year at Furman, graduating, getting married a week later, soon after moving to a big city, and starting grad school.  You say "What?!" And I say, "Yeah, me too."  But I guess that's what life is about.  I'm kind of excited about all the changes.  New starts are always fun.  Still today, I get that little flutter in my chest when a new school year is about to start. (But hey I get that feeling when I buy a new planner.)  I may one day regret saying this, but I really like circumstances that make me uncomfortable and keep me from getting too settled.  I don't want to spend my life being used to my life.  

So yeah, I'm getting married, tying the knot, gettin hitched, gaining the old ball and chain.  Whatever you call it, I'm getting to spend the rest of my life with the man I love.  I cannot imagine who I would be without him.  Look out world, you only have 10 more months until the Gibson Coxes come running.

Maybe I should make a new post.

Theme and Variations on a Carol of Incarnation

(I recently wrote this article for the Concoxions magazine "The Amalgam" and thought it might be a nice Christmas blog as well.)

Yes. I admit. I'm one of those people who will pull out a Christmas CD in July. Why save it all for Christmas Day? Every Christmas we hear the story of the Christ child told in the traditional carols we sing and the new versions pop artists always come out with. But just how well do these songs we all have memorized tell the story?
How many times have you sung and heard "Away in a Manger" and "Silent Night"? Probably hundreds. Look again.

The cattle are lowing the baby awakes, but little Lord Jesus no crying he makes.

Holy infant so tender and mild.

Really? Was Jesus a sweet little child who never pooped his pants or cried for food? I doubt it. Jesus was a real baby. Babies cry to communicate. They keep their parents up half the night. They giggle and coo and scream. That baby had young scared, parents, who didn't know what to do with this new child. Mary was probably not ready to be a mom in her own mind, but God had chosen her. Mary, did you know? In first century Bethlehem, life for a young family would have been much harder than it is today. Being born in a manger isn't exactly the most ideal of situations. The little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay. It would've been cold and uncomfortable for the baby Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. They had had a long, hard journey. Mary was exhausted, but being a Jewish woman about to give birth, an innkeeper wouldn't want to deal with the uncleanliness she brought. So Mary and Joseph were sent to the only fairly clean shelter around. A stable. No crib for a bed.
This baby boy was like any other yet so different from any other. Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, hail the incarnate deity! He was the one Son of God. He would one day reconcile the world to God. The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight. But until that day, he had to grow up like the rest of us. God became human to identify with us, to show how he stood with us. O come desire of nations, bind all peoples in one heart and mind. In this beautiful act of love, God, the creator of all the world, was himself recreated in flesh as a defenseless baby born to impoverished parents. Long desired behold him come, finding here His humble home.
The Christmas story is more than pretty Mary in a blue bathrobe with a quiet sleeping baby boy. It is more than angels singing gloooooooooooooooria. Christmas is the beginning of a story that has changed humanity forever. It is a story that affects you and me every moment of every day. So don't save it all for Christmas day.

Want to hear more on how the story might've really happened? Put off watching "Elf" and join in my new holiday tradition: watching "The Nativity Story." Christmas hasn't really started for me yet, because I haven't gotten to watch it. This movie puts your heart in a place to truly worship at Christmastime. Let all within us praise his holy name! (Sorry, I couldn't resist that one.) The incarnation, God becoming human, becomes so real. You feel Mary's tentative strength and see Joseph's struggles. Not only is the story great, if you're into this sort of thing, the cinematography is first class. It is an all around beautiful movie. I definitely recommend it as new Christmas staple.


Lyrics taken from:
Hark the Herald Angels Sing
Away in a Manger
Silent Night
O Little Town of Bethlehem
O Come O Come Emmanuel
Don't Save it All for Christmas Day
Mary Did You Know
O Holy Night
Angels We Have Heard on High
(Imagine them being sung in a voice much like Anna Ruffner's.)

A wind in the leaves mood

I'm in rare form right now. I don't often have time to be contemplative, but when I am, it hits me hard. When I can just think, I feel like...well, truly me. It's hard to explain. Oh, but I love this feeling. I'm not one to just post song lyrics, but I found a song this morning and it really hit me. So, I'm going to share my contemplative mood with you...

Alexi Murdoch, "All My Days"

"Well I have been searching all of my days
All of my days
Many a road, you know
I’ve been walking on
All of my days
And I’ve been trying to find
What’s been in my mind
As the days keep turning into night

Well I have been quietly standing in the shade
All of my days
Watch the sky breaking on the promise that we made
All of this rain
And I’ve been trying to find
What’s been in my mind
As the days keep turning into night

Well many a night I found myself with no friends standing near
All of my days
I cried aloud
I shook my hands
What am I doing here
All of these days
For I look around me
And my eyes confound me
And it’s just too bright
As the days keep turning into night

Now I see clearly
It’s you I’m looking for
All of my days
Soon I’ll smile
I know I’ll feel this loneliness no more
All of my days
For I look around me
And it seems He found me
And it’s coming into sight
As the days keep turning into night
As the days keep turning into night
And even breathing feels all right
Yes, even breathing feels all right
Now even breathing feels all right
It’s even breathing
Feels all right"

Life Begins at the Intersection

If you knew what just happened to me, and what I did.... oh goodness.


I wrote that line to start a blog about 3 months ago, and just now came back to it. (I acutally forgot about it.) This blog will be quite different from how it would've been if I actually wrote it then, but I think that's a good thing. Warning, it's a long story. So to what I did...

A lot of you have probably heard this story, a lot of you probably haven't. On March 8, 2007 at 7:00 am, I sat straight up in my bed. I had just had a dream, but I didn't really know what it was. My alarm wasn't set to go off for another hour and a half, but I needed to get up. Something was yelling inside, "This is going to change. Do it. It's the right thing." So I climbed off my enormously high top bunk and went to my computer. I rather methodically looked up the schedule for both a BA of music and BA of religion. I figured out how I could possibly make the double major fit in in the next two years (I had previously been a hardcore BM music education). I also started looking up graduate schools that offered a MSW (Master of Social Work) program. As it started getting closer to time for me to get ready to start school for the morning, I'm pretty sure my heart rate started increasing. I guess I began to realize what was going on. Not only was I completely changing my life currently, I was changing it forever. It all felt so surreal. I also began to realize that in order to make this change it had to be now or never. We were three days into spring term, and I had already been to all my classes. But in order to try this I had to get into a religion class ASAP.

Jodi woke up and got out of bed. Poor girl, I just start bawling and she has no clue what's going on. Supposedly I said, "Jodi, I'm changing my life!" Haha, oh Tiffany. So I went to my first class at 9, and then breakfast at 10. I met Taylor at breakfast and just start spilling everything. I tell him I have to get into a religion class now, and I have no idea how that's going to happen. We go upstairs to a computer and look at the schedules. All Religion 11 classes are full. Taylor just says, "Let's go to Dr. CroweTipton's (the chaplain) office." Taylor pretty much has to carry me over there because I stop to cry periodically. Once there, I tell Dr. CroweTipton everything that's happened so far (or at least what I understand of what's happened), and without blinking he tells me everything I need to do in my time at Furman to prepare, to be in EVM (Exploration of Vocational Ministry, a program that guides students in finding their calling), what scholarships are available, how starting the religion major would work. The fact that all the classes were full worked in my favor! That way Dr. CroweTipton could just place me in his class.

I then proceed to go to my 11:00 class. All of this happens before 11 am on a Thursday morning. What?! I get a form to drop my Education class in place of the Religion class, and turn the form in the last day possible to switch classes. Tell me this is all coincidence.

That evening I went to Chris and EA's with Taylor to pick up his baseball glove. We talked for a long time about what happened that day. I of course had some doubts, or at least wanted more clarity. Chris commented, "You're just looking for some kind of burning bush," and Taylor replies, "Are you kidding? It's been a burning bush day for her!" True story.

So pretty much I have been called into the ministry in the most surreal and roundabout way possible. Not everything like that has to happen in a church or camp service. :)

Over the next couple weeks I struggle with what really my major should be. Since my first thoughts are toward Social Work, wouldn't it make more sense that I should take a sociology major? But I knew I wanted to be a religion major, and I wanted to do some sort of social ministry. The sociology idea eventually left. I had said that my Religion 11 class (the introductory course to the program no less) would be a my trial run. If I so chose, I could still go back to music or sociology and wouldn't loose anything. I needed that class anyway. If I really enjoyed it and did well, that would be my sign. Let's just say I really enjoyed it, and did better than I had in any other class at Furman.

So I guess you could say I've discerned the college part of this process, but now the question is, where do I go from here? Do I go with my original thought and get a MSW? I know I want to do some sort of ministry, probably social ministry or non-profit work, but is that the route I want to go? What else do you do with a religion major? I've thought a lot about seminary, but do I want to do three more years of school?! Two I think I can handle, but three? I don't really want to do a church job (although I have toyed with the idea), but seminary would prepare me for so much more. Divinity school? Future religion professor? I don't think so. I can't write or read that many books.

So here I am, 3 months, a semester, and changed life later. I am reading heady books about the fate of religion in a postmodern world and true calling for my summer leisure time. WEIRD. I am preparing to add a crazy amount of time commitments on top of my already crazy schedule. I will be in EVM this year and am doing an unusual combo of orientation group, helping with chapel services, and already doing an internship since I started so late. I will be working with the Greenville Area Interfaith Housing Network (GAIHN) this year, a program that places homeless, or otherwise in need, families in temporary housing in until they can get on their feet.

I am truly excited, a little nervous, and ready to trust in these next steps. God has done so much with me. I am a little shocked with myself at how I just did it. I'm not like that! I have to have everything planned and be in control of the situation. I told Dr. Ray that I didn't how I so easily gave up the music education path. He informed me that I had probably already let go of it. Without even knowing? Strange, but he's probably right. I think this process started long before that March morning, and I had no clue that anything was happening to me. God knew it needed to be done that way. He makes me laugh. :) Switchfoot is usually pretty smart, and these lyrics, "What direction, what direction? Life begins at the intersection!" have been in my head for a while now. In fact I kept listening to that song the days before I made the change. (It sounds like I'm talking about a sex change or something.) Life begins when we look up and see where we're going, when we make those life changing decisions, when we realize where God is leading us. It's when we realize what this life is truly about. It's when we find purpose.

You've one life left to lead.




"Faust, Midas, and Myself" Oh, Gravity! Switchfoot, 2006.

The Simple Life

I think to get me, or at least my love of music, you have to understand two pieces that (to put it in the cheesiest way possible) make my heart soar.

It's funny how different components of your life just seem to intertwine. Lately I've been thinking about simplicity. I desire a simple life, and always have. Part of me wants to give everything I own away, move someplace away from the madness of 21st Century globalization, and reach out to and be with real, genuine people. I'm also a bit ambitious, so I've been trying to figure out how all of that fits together. Do I let all of my goals and ambitions go and live as simply as I can, giving and loving and nothing else? Can and do my, I guess selfish, ideas fit into that? What about all the work we put into Furman. Does that matter for anything? Truly matter?

So now the music. Music is a strange being. It is so simple and yet soooooo immensely complex. If you have any knowledge of theory you know what I'm talking about. The language of music fascinates me. The way individual chords function, their unique characteristics, how a single note and the way it resolves can change the result of an entire symphony. Let's just say I like metaphors. :)

But once you get away from the progressive, chromatic, diatonic, atonal, Phrygian...notes, you have.... music. Pure music. The way it plays on the ear can be beautiful and tragic, inspiring and contemplative. Like I mentioned, there are two pieces I guess you could say are me. Adagio for Strings Op. 11 by Samuel Barber and the Overture to Das Rheingold: Vorspiel by Richard Wagner.

Let me explain a little about both pieces. Barber's Adagio is, at least rhythmically, very simple. Yet the chord progressions and dynamic changes make it one of the most beautiful and moving pieces I have ever played or listened to. It's one of those pieces that makes me cry sometimes when I listen to it, but always when I play it. The overture to Wagner's Ring Cycle is the essence of musical simplicity. It is a four minute pedal on Eflat. That means it is just four minutes of Eflat major arpeggios. But it's so effective! If I ever see the opera live, I can guarantee you I will jump out of my seat from excitement. It just keeps building and building. Ah it's amazing.

Ok so my point... Simplicity is beautiful. In so many ways. In love, in life, in music. I want God to teach me what it means to think simply, live simply, be simple.

Oh and PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE listen to these pieces. Either buy them on iTunes or email me and will send them too you. Maybe you'll understand me a little better.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFkyAD9gS6g - great usage of Wagner, and only good part of this movie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRMz8fKkG2g&mode=related&search= - Common use of Barber's piece. for some reason it appeals to our humanity.

Wow what a year

Happy Anniversary Darling!

Free Verse on a Prevost

We were riding in the bus on the way to Disney. It was still before 7 in the morning, but the sky was just beginning to lighten. From my angle all I could see was the tops of trees, the mountains, and the sky. It was beautiful. I noticed something about the trees though.

Some of them looked jagged and grasping. They looked like they were trying to reach the sky to pull it down. The clawing hands were just holding on to life. They were looking for something, anything, to hold onto. I’m not sure why, (maybe because I had only had 5 hours of sleep), but those trees just looked so sad to me.

Some other trees were a type of evergreen I’ve seen before that just has green at the very top. They looked like they had caps on, blocking them from the sky. Something was keeping them from seeing the morning. They just ended so abruptly, like there was a ceiling or something.

But the other trees I saw made my heart happy. They had lost all their leaves, yet they still looked open and full. They rejoiced in the dawn light.

Then the dawn came. After the previous day that had been so dark and ugly, we started our long trip on an absolutely gorgeous morning.



Free Verse on a Prevost
You made everything in this world so different, yet so the same
The beauty of creation amazes me
I meditate on the gifts you’ve given me
The gift of sight
The gift of sound
Listening to hymns and blues
Morning light shines on my face
I praise you for song written by man
And song sung by creation
Thank you