Hello.

Hi there. I've been pretty busy as of late. I've been pushed and stretched and thrown into situations during the last couple of weeks that have caused me to return to the same two thoughts:

1. Everything always happens at once. It's feast or famine.

2. I have some really good friends. Love you.

I've been given a clear (or, more clear) view of myself and my health and I'm happy and proud to say that I've come a long way, darlings.

I've been given a clear (or, more clear) picture of love, and I can say this confidently--love is real, and for one of the first times I see--love is exciting. Like, really exciting.

Love is slow.
Generous.
Patient.
Necessary.

"Wasn't it better to hope that tomorrow would bring a better day and to cut the losses and trust that we could get on better footing? The silence of self-condemnation, despair, and/or frail hope is a subterfuge that pretends the symptoms are due to stress when the problem is cancer. Silence will not begin until that persistent inner voice justifying our failure to love is muted.

A hint may now be offered as to why grace is so demanding in its free offer - all that's required in response is stunned silence and overwhelmed gratitude. A stunned and grateful heart is free to love because it has been captured with the hilarious paradox that we are unlovely but loved, and unable to love but free to try without condemnation. And all efforts to love are made useful by a great Lover who superintends all our bumbling efforts and turns the dross of mixed motives to the gold of eternal intentions."

Dan Allender, of course, of course.

starting tomorrow:

I'll spend five weeks accomplishing this:


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As previously stated, I'll be in GR for two weeks. If you want to go to Marie Catrib's, Bangkok Taste, Bar Divani, Morado, Founders, Bombay, Kava House, Wolfgang's, Monte's or Sami's...holler.

See you soon.
xo.
j

dan allender says:

"The healing path must pass through the desert or else our healing will be the product of our own will and wisdom. It is in the silence of the desert that we hear our dependence on noise. It is in the poverty of the desert that we see clearly our attachments to the trinkets and baubles we cling to for security and pleasure.
The desert shatters the soul's arrogance and leaves body and soul crying out in thirst and hunger. In the desert, we trust God, or we die."

*sigh*

Dan Allender just knows.

Attention Grand Rapids (and other cities)!

I miss you, so I'm coming back.

No, just kidding.

I do miss you though, and I'm going to be in GR for a couple weeks in July.
My good friend, Daley Hake, is going to be traveling with me doing photoshoots along the way while helping me get back out to CA. The driving route is going to be:

Grand Rapids>Indy>Nashville>Atlanta>Dallas>Phoenix>LA

I'm booking his shoot schedule for the trip, so if you are in need of some photography, shoot me an email at juliebelle.music@gmail.com. Family, engagement, band, promo, you name it.

Check out some of his work at his blog and see lots of photos on flickr.

He has never been to west Michigan, so we certainly ought to show him a lovely time.

Holler at me and we'll hook you up.

Economics as....self help??

Disclaimer: Do everything in your power to read this blog, despite any amount of economical jargon you may encounter, because I think a book on economics just changed my life.

Ok, check this out.

I'm reading The End of Poverty, Economic Possibilities for Our Time, by Jeffrey Sachs. The book is pretty reader friendly, but only if you're really interested in economics. I didn't realize that until my mom and I were having a conversation about how I'm near-sighted and don't need to wear contacts when I read. Our goofy conversation led to me holding the book about a half inch from my face, demonstrating I could still read it clearly. I just so happened to read this sentence to her:

The fifth category of the differential diagnosis involves patterns of governance beyond the specifics of the budget process and detailed economic policies.

She laughed and said she couldn't believe I was reading that. I understood her comment to mean that she couldn't believe I was capable of reading a book placed so close to my face.

Apparently she was referring to the content.

It never dawned on me that not everyone on the the planet enjoys this topic--namely, college drop-outs.

But check this out. Today I read the author's account of how he intervened in helping Poland return to Europe after the Soviet-era. Poland had about $40 billion of foreign debt, and even though it had a great new plan for moving forward, no one knew if Poland could really survive with so much debt hanging over its head.

So here's the scene: there's a big razzamarooza with a bunch of political leaders in Poland, with some US representatives in attendance, to congratulate the country on its new plan. The first speaker was Bob Dole, who gave a nice speech about how the US supported Poland's courage to change and move toward stability. Warm fuzzies, good wishes, etc.

Then Jeffrey Sachs (the book's author), gets up to the podium and basically without the proper authority, proceeds to cancel Poland's debt, without even flinching. I was seriously laughing at his speech.

Are you still reading? Check this out:

I want to remind you of what Senator Dole just said. Senator Dole said that the American people are with you. I have no doubt that that's true. We Americans understand that after forty-five years of domination, Poland today marks one of the most important and positive events in modern history. Americans will be with you; Europe is with you. So I'm sure Senator Dole agrees that Poland's debt should just be canceled. There's no way that the Soviet-era debt should in any way risk the freedom of the Polish people.

OMG, right? But get this, he's not even done there:

Your debt crisis is over. All you have to do is send a postcard to your creditors: 'Thank you very much, but now we're in the age of freedom and democracy, and we can't pay you the Soviet-era debts.' Don't think about it again; it's done.

Just like that. Brilliant.

Obviously this has huge implications for our world, and the attainability of truly ending poverty, but I can't get over how many personal spiritual and emotional implications this has. It's like we walk around trying to move forward with life, but we owe billions of dollars in guilt and pain and shame and pride to things from our destructive past, so we assume that we'll just carry it around forever, or buckle under the stress of it.

And then, "someone" just comes along and is like, "Oh hey Julie, btw, you're crazy for thinking you have to worry about any of that stuff. You've moved on, you don't owe anything to anybody."

Oh, ok.

I think that's what grace and peace means.

Grace and peace, FTW!

Attention, please.

Happy Father's Day, Dad.



One thing my dad has always been good at is giving me attention. And, from day one, I've never really had a problem with demanding it.

For example: when I was young...probably somewhere between 3 and 10, I took SUCH great joy out of one particular method in attention-demanding. I used to wait until he was sitting in our blue lazy boy chair, reading the newspaper, trying to chill out. I'd sneak up to the chair until I was right in front of him, and then with all my might, punch the newspaper in and giggle uncontrollably.

Seriously? How annoying, right?

Loving me anyway is seriously one of the greatest feats of humanity.

Thanks for that, Dad. Love you back.

newwww jersey

[desktop background :: longbrake]

I just had such a good few days in New Jersey. I love Mindy.

We talked a lot about being happy, stress, and what to do with our lives. Fear of failure, fear of greatness...the basic problem of men and the basic problem of women...

Unfortunately we didn't solve any of these problems, but it was theraputic.

If you've figured these things out, let me know?

Mark was thrilled that he was there for my first ever viewing of Rocky. And you know what? I loved it. In the most genuine possible way, I seriously loved Rocky. I feel so American now.

And I got to bust out my white hat on the beach, in spite of Mark calling me "Auntie Em" all week.

remember this?

I'm about to hop in the car to visit Mindy & Mark up in New Jersey, realized I don't exactly remember how to get there, and actually had this serious thought of, "Oh, I should just look up that GPS picture." ...because googling directions is such a pain?

I proceeded to write reverse directions....on my hand.



At least it's an environmentally friendly method.

Off I go.

If this isn't beautiful...

...then neither is anything else.

Trace couldn't have done a better job of capturing the emotion in the moment. Every face in this photo is so emotive. Uh-mazing capture.



If you're the praying type, remember the DiCoccos (Trace's family). South Africa is still sorting through its paradoxical history of oppression and segregation, and in recent weeks the despair brought on by relentless poverty has flared up anger and violence. The DiCoccos are some of many friends who have packed their bags to give their lives/love/time/talent to the beautiful people of South Africa.

They inspire me.

technology woes

I was informed today that all my calls have been forwarded straight to voicemail, and no texts are getting through. Long story, but my phone was set to unavailable through an outside voice portal that I use for work. But, that's all taken care of. So please, don't take it personally.

on the right thing

Recently written in a letter, on doing the right thing.

There's not really anything wrong with it, except its painfully inescapable
irony...that being: the whole point of asking "what's the next right
thing?" is an attempt to simplify (or pacify?)—but the problem is that
most of the time, most of us don't know what the next right thing
is, or have no clue on where to begin trying to figure out whether or
not something is right.

We're setting ourselves up for almost
certain failure, a lot of disappointment, and a hell of a lot of pain
if we're truly going to view life as only ever having one right
thing--because by default, that means that for every right thing,
there is an infinite number of wrong things and an infinite number of
ways to mess up.

So five years from now, when you look back,
the grass will look greener then, just like it does now. I don't know
if there's ever a point in life where that changes—if there's some
super-wisdom that can be attained by growing up, but I'm willing to
bet that it never goes away. The grass always looks greener, though I
don't know if it actually is. There's probably no normative or
overarching rule. Maybe sometimes it is greener, and sometimes it's not. Most
of the time it's probably not a matter of which shade of green is
better, but simply a matter of acknowledging that on the other side,
the grass is different than it is here.

I don't know if I wrote that more for you or more for me, but for what
it's worth, that's where I'm at right now.

Otherwise, I am interested in playing music every day for the rest of
my life.

Ummm....back to work.
love
julie

blog transplant/surgery

i'm going back on what i said when i first started my other blog over at wordpress. i told you there'd be little to no content overlap.

i changed my mind.

now there will be almost 100% content overlap. the only difference will be that over there i won't post things like...family vacation pictures. so, if you want to see those kinds of things, stay here. if you think my nephew is cute, but would rather not see his picture, (how dare you!), go there.

thanks for reading.

ok bye.

jd salinger

Here's one reason why he's one of my favorite authors.

From Franny and Zooey:

To get straight to the worst, what I'm about to offer isn't really a short story at all, but a sort of prose home movie, and those who have seen the footage have strongly advised me against nuturing any elaborate distribution plans for it.

blogging = narcissism

Well, of course.

Best said on Aaron's blog header:

There is so much to do, wrestle with, and explore. And a blog is perfect: ridiculously self-indulgent, zero accountability, and ideal for deluding myself into thinking that I'm sharing genius thoughts with an army of interested learners.

Touche.

a flashback

Mars Hill put out a live cd a few years ago when Aaron was still there. I was looking through boxes and not too long ago found it buried in the bottom of one.

Aaron said some really great stuff before one of the songs...check it out:

"If I'm really honest, my natural movement is downward. You know, I so quickly become the cynic. The critic. The guy who can only see whats wrong and points it out to everybody. And everybody loves that guy. I guess I just thought for a long time, you know, I'm just one of the perceptive ones, that kind of thing. I'm one of the smart ones, standing in the back of the room throwing stones at everything. Now it just seems that I think I was afraid. I just think I was scared. It is so easy to be a cynic. It is so easy to find and point out what's wrong with things. I mean, anybody can do that. But it takes courage to believe. and in this world, where there's so much darkness, so much screwed up sin, it takes the deepest kind of courage to stand up and find the good and hold out for hope. And so when we choose to go upward, to find God's fingerprints everywhere, we are choosing to really live because cynicism is a dead end."

And then he read what has become a favorite quote of mine over the last few years, from GK Chesterton:

"The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again!"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again!" to the sun; and evening, "Do it again!" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all dasies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we."

another gem

Hey Brother, this is a myspace photo if I've ever seen one.



You're welcome. To all of you.