Radical Love

Hello dear blogspot community!

I'm finally posting from the west coast (best coast)!!! I've missed LA so much, it's so nice to finally be home and to see so many familiar faces and not have to deal with the humidity of the south.
School has officially started, which means I really need to get my butt going on my senior film. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten as much done over the summer as I wanted to, but at least I definitely haven't dived into senior year empty handed. Also, TODAY IS GAME DAY! BEAT THE RAINBOWS.

k shameless promotion of USC because Trojans

I'm going to diverge from the regular updates about my thesis for today because I want to talk about love. (But this is still relevant to my film I promise.)
Last night, I started to discover that maybe my senior year is going to be more than just me making a short film, going to all the season games, rooming with my best friend, and yolo-ing my way through senior year of college. But then I went to the One Love event last night and heard Heidi Baker speak. Apparently, as usual, God seems to have something bigger in mind.

Heidi being awesome and making people cry

In my experience, God seems to enjoy planning things out in my life that are set during very specific dates in my life. Once, for example; I got very sick during winter break, but God had the grace to let me celebrate Christmas with my family first in perfect health. I literally got a fever at the stroke of midnight on December 26th, and was bedridden for the next 1.5 - 2 weeks. But at least I wasn't sick on Christmas! 2012, one of the best and most enriching years of my life, was planned so that I started the new year in Hong Kong, interned for the first time at Dreamworks, lived in Europe for 4 months, and closed the year singing and dancing with 16,000 others at Urbana in St. Louis. And my 21st, the official "adult" age, was on the first day of school after coming back from Europe. Go figure.

This week is the first week of school. (Click here for my photo blog for usc senior year) On the first day of classes, I met a homeless woman by my apartment who asked me for a meal - it was hot and she was covered in blankets and hadn't had any food. It was easy for me to get her a meal from Wendys, so I did. But I also walk past her everyday to and from classes- I don't have the money or the time to really take care of her, even though I want to. And it sounds awful, but sometimes homeless people scare me because I don't know who they are, and I don't want to be near them. What does it mean to love? What does it mean to see people through God's eyes?

Last night Heidi gave a talk on loving others and really seeing the people around you. "Big things don't excite me" she said. "It's not about going bigger, it's about going slower." It's about taking the time to lay down your pride and busy schedules to embrace someone who needs it. It's about trusting God enough to know that even though I don't have much money, there is someone out there who has far less than I can fathom - financially, socially. It's about seeing the people who the world turns a blind eye to, understanding that no matter what, I will always be provided for through Christ. And I'm still scared to do that because I know it will cost me. It will force me to step outside of my comfort zone.

One of Heidi's experiences involved her driving with her sister to this dry, desert "hellhole" of a town, where people were curled up under trees and had so many worms in their hands and feet that the couldn't even crawl to the water well. These people were dying and diseased, but Heidi stopped for them and brought them to the well to help heal them. What does it matter if you save one person when there are millions others who continue to suffer? I didn't know the answer, but she did. When you understand God's love and heart through others, that compassion transforms you from the inside out and spreads to others around you. Each person Heidi helped got a glimpse of what it meant to be loved by God, and in turn started to love others in the same way. In the end, the town that Heidi went to was able to receive more and more aid, to the point that they started to learn how to take care of each other and tend the soil so that worms would no longer be a problem. It was a community transformed by radical, fearless love.

Being powerful

Worship with 700 students from all across LA!

As many of you know, my thesis film is about a little girl, Noemi who learns through her magical tree-friend, Milo, how to be brave and change her community through love. *spoiler alert* In the final scene, she realizes that in order to transform lives and really love someone, you have to really see them and love them for who they are. Simple drawings won't change hearts, and she encounters this when she meets the homeless man- a character who intimidates and scares her the most. In the end, the entire community is changed through the townspeople caring for one another. See what I'm getting at here? Or more correctly, where God is getting at. God is essentially telling me my own story. I see what you did there, God.

God is many things; he is an artist, a poet, an engineer, a teacher, and a beautiful storyteller. But above all I've found God to be a father and wise friend who continues to take me on wild adventures, one after another.

A lot of my final year will be comprised of me scrambling to make the best short-film I can make. But God has His own agenda and I know there are still lots of things I have yet to learn before I graduate. Maybe this is taboo for me to say as an aspiring animator, but making an amazing film isn't my #1 priority. Above all I want to learn how to love radically. I want to learn how to live out the message behind my (or God's) little story.

Love
me :)