We, Ode to the Forgotten, are praying and, in faith, are beginning to plan an event, God-willing! More details will come later, but we hope that this event will be inspiring and, at the same time, boost involvement with what God's doing through Ode. It will be a debut of sorts of our CD and an experience to not miss for sure! Here are our hopes for this event:
This event is meant to inspire people to go out and write, but most of all to take a look at their community and the world around them and see how they can serve it and show God’s love in all situations. It is not just a performance but an experience. Even before the poetry/songs/stories are presented, we want people to be drawn to examine themselves and the world by the quotes on the walls, the atmosphere, the pictures hanging up, and the information creatively presented all around them. There will be multiple chances for them to get involved in service during the night.
The performance portion will include poetry from our CD of How To (tentative name) that is coming out, which describes how to get involved in ODE, original songs inspired by mission trips and God, and possibly stories from people who have been earnestly convicted by God to turn from their comfortable living and live to serve other people in the name of God. We hope that people leave the event feeling inspired to help with Ode (to write, take pictures, draw, sing and send it to us), but most of all inspired to see the world and to see their lives differently. We pray that we can help open peoples’ eyes to the glory of God and to their purpose, and that they would never be tempted to shut them ever again and return to their previous comfort.
Ode to the poor, the lame, and the blind. Ode to the forgotten. We hope to inspire the poor in spirit, open the eyes of those whose hearts are blind toward God’s calling to love, and to invigorate those who have made themselves numb to the needs of others. We have the poor, lame, blind, and forgotten sitting with us in our schools, in our work buildings, in our homes, as well as in other countries. We are, at times, blind ourselves. Let us refresh ourselves and be open to God’s calling. That is the purpose of this event.
Let us know what you think! Praise God and thank you for your involvement! It's growing now! Love you all!
April 3, 2010
March 8, 2010
Possible Page background!
February 23, 2010
Why We Write
"A critic a few years back...wrote...wondering how i could have been born and raise in Waukegan...and not noticed how ugly the harbor was and how depressing the coal docks and railyards...i had noticed them and...was fascinated by their beauty. Trains and boxcars and the smell of coal and fire are not ugly to children. Ugliness is a concept that we happen on later and become self-conscious about."
- Ray Bradbury Dandelion Wine (page ix)
"In other words, if your boy is a poet, horse manure can only mean flowers to him; which is, of course, what horse manure has always been about."
- page x
"The people there were gods and midgets and knew themselves mortal and so the midgets walked tall so as not to embarrass the gods, and the gods crouched so as to make the small ones feel at home. And, after all, isn't that what life is all about, the ability to go around back and come up inside peoples' heads to look out at the [darned] fool miracle (i think he means yourself), and say: oh, so that's how you see it!? Well, now, i must remember that.
Here is my celebration, then, of death as well as life, dark as well as light, old as well as young, smart and dumb combined, sheer joy as well as complete terror written by a boy who once hung upside down in trees dressed in his bat costume with candy fangs in his mouth, who finally fell out of the trees when he was twelve and went and found a toy-dial type writer and wrote his first 'novel'."
- page xii
Why write? Why write when it makes an unrealistic, way-too-beautiful picture of the world around us? when we think up for ourselves such high expectations? when we beautify the things that are simple and expand upon matters that don't seem to matter all that much? Becuase when you write. When you write like that. It reflects something in the very depths of your heart. That we were programmed and created with a desire and a knowledge in our hearts that there truly is a place that beautiful. Even the most secluded of slaves can write about freedom. In our hearts we can picture just a glimpse of the beautiful land that awaits us. And so we write. Not to be unrealistic. Oh how that word limits so many good things... and bad alike. But no. We write for hope. We write because of assurance. We write from the depths of what we know to be true. The simple is beautified because anything more complex would be confusing. The simple is beautified because wisdom lies much of the time in silence. The simple is beautified because beauty doesn't have to be a complex production. So many of us spend our lives trying to make the lives we're spending so much more beautiful. We add and add and add and add til we think we've created a masterpiece. Yet in the end we end up finding out- that it would have been just as beautiful if we just thought the things we started with were beautiful in the first place. Make-up sometimes removes the raw truth and honesty. That true beauty is natural things covered up and bejeweled. True beauty is authenticity- taking the simple and changing your state of thinking to seeing it as 'beautiful'. Which is more of a miraculous, breath-taking change: to take something you deem physically 'not beautiful' and make it more beautiful yourself? or to let the thing itself sit around in your mind for a while and show you what it really is and then end up creating a beautiful change in your inner thoughts about what you think about it- taking your thoughts from degrading and judgemental to joyful and appreciative, not of things that COULD BE, but of the things that ALREADY ARE? Which is better? I say the second. If we fail to realize the true beauty of the things already before us, how will we every be able to judge whether or not the thing we've created is, in fact, truly beautiful? So we take the simple, the good and the bad about it, and we deem them both beautiful. Because we know that one day the bad will be changed to good and the good will remain and that physical beauty is fleeting, but a changed mind and a changed heart will last forever and impact generations to come. That is why we write.
- Ray Bradbury Dandelion Wine (page ix)
"In other words, if your boy is a poet, horse manure can only mean flowers to him; which is, of course, what horse manure has always been about."
- page x
"The people there were gods and midgets and knew themselves mortal and so the midgets walked tall so as not to embarrass the gods, and the gods crouched so as to make the small ones feel at home. And, after all, isn't that what life is all about, the ability to go around back and come up inside peoples' heads to look out at the [darned] fool miracle (i think he means yourself), and say: oh, so that's how you see it!? Well, now, i must remember that.
Here is my celebration, then, of death as well as life, dark as well as light, old as well as young, smart and dumb combined, sheer joy as well as complete terror written by a boy who once hung upside down in trees dressed in his bat costume with candy fangs in his mouth, who finally fell out of the trees when he was twelve and went and found a toy-dial type writer and wrote his first 'novel'."
- page xii
Why write? Why write when it makes an unrealistic, way-too-beautiful picture of the world around us? when we think up for ourselves such high expectations? when we beautify the things that are simple and expand upon matters that don't seem to matter all that much? Becuase when you write. When you write like that. It reflects something in the very depths of your heart. That we were programmed and created with a desire and a knowledge in our hearts that there truly is a place that beautiful. Even the most secluded of slaves can write about freedom. In our hearts we can picture just a glimpse of the beautiful land that awaits us. And so we write. Not to be unrealistic. Oh how that word limits so many good things... and bad alike. But no. We write for hope. We write because of assurance. We write from the depths of what we know to be true. The simple is beautified because anything more complex would be confusing. The simple is beautified because wisdom lies much of the time in silence. The simple is beautified because beauty doesn't have to be a complex production. So many of us spend our lives trying to make the lives we're spending so much more beautiful. We add and add and add and add til we think we've created a masterpiece. Yet in the end we end up finding out- that it would have been just as beautiful if we just thought the things we started with were beautiful in the first place. Make-up sometimes removes the raw truth and honesty. That true beauty is natural things covered up and bejeweled. True beauty is authenticity- taking the simple and changing your state of thinking to seeing it as 'beautiful'. Which is more of a miraculous, breath-taking change: to take something you deem physically 'not beautiful' and make it more beautiful yourself? or to let the thing itself sit around in your mind for a while and show you what it really is and then end up creating a beautiful change in your inner thoughts about what you think about it- taking your thoughts from degrading and judgemental to joyful and appreciative, not of things that COULD BE, but of the things that ALREADY ARE? Which is better? I say the second. If we fail to realize the true beauty of the things already before us, how will we every be able to judge whether or not the thing we've created is, in fact, truly beautiful? So we take the simple, the good and the bad about it, and we deem them both beautiful. Because we know that one day the bad will be changed to good and the good will remain and that physical beauty is fleeting, but a changed mind and a changed heart will last forever and impact generations to come. That is why we write.
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