Can you attach mp3 files to a blog?

Does anyone know how to attach mp3 files to this?  I would like to do that with some things I've recorded on Audacity.  Let me know if you know how!  Thanks so much.

Contrast

I've been wanting to blog but I haven't made the time to write lately.  I have been working a lot (for me) and also, I suppose, playing a lot too.  :)

Well, today as I was driving over highway 55 eastwards I saw the Purina Plant which is being demolished and above all the piles of rubble there was about twenty or thirty dark colored birds (crows, perhaps) sitting on a telephone wire, but what was striking was that in the middle of these was a single white bird of almost exactly the same size.   I was gawking from my car as I drove by and continued to sing with the radio.  I turned my head back a ways to make certain I was seeing it; yes, indeed I was.  Now, I do not know what kind of bird it was (nor what the other birds were actually).  My only guess is that it may have been a dove but even knowing that still doesn't explain things.

As I biked later on I thought of this image in my mind and Jesus (or followers of Jesus) could be like that white bird.  When everything else is falling apart all around and everyone else is darkness, those who follow Jesus can be light.  This also connects with a song I heard in my car by Sara Groves,

"You are the sun/ shining down on everyone
Light of the world/ giving light to everything I see
Beauty so brilliant/ I can hardly take it in
And everywhere you are is warmth and light

And I am the moon with no light of my own
Still you have made me to shine
And as I glow in this cold dark night
I know I can't be a light unless I turn my face to you"

Simple but beautiful.  I want to be like a white bird that makes someone wonder, but I know that I don't have light, I don't have goodness - without Jesus my Savior. 

Sufjan Stevens: sustenance for the soul

In my college years I discovered a remarkable musician/artist:  Sufjan Stevens.  My husband and I had one of his songs, "Vito's Ordination", play as the recessional at our wedding.  It was very fitting to us.  It's been a number of years since he's released anything resembling an album until just a couple of weeks ago.  I find myself craving his new songs just like I used to his old ones (which I still must listen to every now and then).  They are like sustenance for the soul.  The way he sings, especially on this album, captures a myriad of emotion and depth of heart.  His lyrics are raw yet whimsical yet enigmatic at times.  So, please, I beg you, have a listen.  At first you may find it too strange, just keep listening and I think you will discover why Sufjan is one of the artists I most love. 

The link:
http://sufjanstevens.bandcamp.com/album/all-delighted-people-ep

Lonely

This is a poem I wrote when Chris was gone for a few days for a work trip.  It's kind of funny because since we got married (5/31/08), we really haven't been away from each other for longer than that.  So, just to let you all know this was the one of the first days he was gone.  It was actually kind of nice to have our place to myself...but of course I missed him.  Here is the poem:

Lonely

Tonight I am lonely

I feel a bit aimless

Unsure of who I am 

In relation to these walls

So used to contrasting myself

With you

To sharing myself, my everything

Forcefully, always, 

With you, my Love

My heart is with you, 

Though I am not

And the tension causes a pang

Of desire for your being

Not sensuous, not just physical

But your soul interrupting mine

Your stubbornness against mine

Is that strange to miss?

Ah, but that is why we are

The best of friends

excerpt from Madeline L'Engle's "Walking on Water: Reflections on Art and Faith"

I've been reading this book now for a couple of weeks, slowly...it is very good.  It is kind of like eating a really delicious food.  You want to read it in small pieces to really take in it's full flavor. 

Anyway, here is an excerpt from it:
"A friend of mine, a fine storyteller, remarked to me, 'Jesus was not a theologian.  He was a God who told stories.'
     Yes.  A God who told stories.
     St. Matthew says, 'And he spake many things unto them in parables...and without a parable spake he not unto them.'
     When the powers of this world denigrate and deny the value of story, life loses much of its meaning; and for many people in the world today, life has no meaning, one reason why every other hospital bed is for someone with mental, not a physical, illness.
     Clyde Kilby writes, "Meaninglessness inhibits fullness of life and is therefore equivalent to illness.  Meaning makes a great many things endurable---perhaps everything....It is not that 'God' is a myth, but that myth is the revelation of divine life in man.  It is not we who invent myth; rather, it speaks to us as a Word of God.'...
     When I was a child, reading Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales, reading about Joseph and his coat of many colours and his infuriating bragging about his dreams, reading The Selfish Giant and The Book of Jonah, these diverse stories spoke to me in the same language, and I knew intuitively that they belonged to the same world.  For the world of the Bible, both the Old and the New Testaments, is the world of story, story which may be able to speak to us as a Word of God.
     The artist who is Christian, like any other Christian, is required to be in this world, but not of it.  We are to be in this world as healers, as listeners, and as servants.
     In art we are once again able to do all the things we have forgotten; we are able to walk on water; we speak to angels who call us; we move, unfettered, among the stars."
-pp.56-57
Anyone want to share their thoughts on this? 

The world without Coffee

What if there was no such thing as coffee?
Rather, what if there was no such thing as liquidated, easy to consume caffeine?

I wonder if 70% of the world would even be able to function.  If coffee/caffeine somehow became obliterated it would be worse than this recession.

:D

excerpt from my journal..."we live in ideas"

     I was thinking of something earlier today too that may be kind of profound.  I was thinking, we live in ideas.  I truly believe this.  At least, let me explain.  In essence I feel that what we think and believe map out our lives.  I believe in God's sovereignty, but, well, I guess if you look at it knowing God created every person including all their thoughts, emotions, personality, etc. it does correspond.  It just seems that everything I do or don't do is based off of some idea, thought, or belief I have about something (known or unknown to myself).  Also, I see how ideas influence our culture tremendously.
     One example of this is the thinking about homosexuality in the U.S. and how it has changed from being seen as a psychological disorder to seeming, to a great majority of Americans, just another lifestyle choice, and "normal".
     Perhaps, as it were, we are in the "age or information" and this causes ideas to be a constant driving influence on each one of us.  However, even apart from that there are people living in a tiny, remote village in Papua New Guinea who probably live their lives completely based off of a set of ideas or beliefs.  It touches every part of their lives and each decision they make.  They are probably much more honest with themselves about this than our hurried individualized American culture allows us to be.
     So, in all this, I acknowledge God as Creator who seems to guide us in these floods of ideas and beliefs.  This intuition is why I bend toward the philosophical and theological.  God, I pray you would lead me in my thoughts, in my feelings, in my beliefs and ideas.  I want them to match with reality (as you formed it) as much as possible so I can live my life most fully.  Thank you, God, for creating everything amazingly.  Thank you that ideas to you aren't just ideas but deepest truth.