Misunderstood Mystery

I could perhaps spend a bit explaining the title of my blog. Word by word is best .

Clouds.

Clouds are so misunderstood. They are always associated with such sadness but people can be on cloud 9 and be happy. We often speak about grey skies clearing or the sun coming out from the behind the clouds as signs of hope. However, growing up in the heat of Texas, a cloud was often a bit of relief from the pounding rays of the sun. For just a second I could look at the sky without frying my retinas.
For most of my childhood clouds were like a piece of fiction. I blame Peter Pan for my desire to lay in the clouds and bounce and sink through the clouds at will.
I could never narrow clouds down to one state of matter, they fluctuated between a solid, liquid, and a gas depending on what I felt that day. However, my romance with the clouds was brought to an abrupt end when in sixth grade science we learned the technicalities of weather. Clouds are nothing but masses of water droplets and gas that are white due to the efficient scattering of light particles. Not only that, they were separated into groups--favorite being the cumulous and least favorite the stringy cirrus-- like the animal species that bored me in other sciences. The groupings according to altitude and molecular makeup remind me a bit of the social cliques in school, which was another key aspect middle school life.
Clouds, like everything else in life are beautiful and mysterious ideas until you break them down into their smaller parts. Is it better to see the world in the former fashion or should we know everything there is to know? If we know everything, where will the mystery of life go? However, if we know nothing we face the possibility of missing out on something valuable. Where’s the line?

life plans?

a delayed post, but a post.

December 9, 2009
where: plane to ATX
time: 6:01 pm

Coming through security at the Pitt Airport, my status as a student was questioned along with my life plan. Undergrad to grad to Phd.
"So what are you studying? What do you want to do?"
“I have to get a doctorate becuase I want to write books.”
“There are lots of people who wrote books without a degree.”
This statement at first annoyed me and made me pity the man who said it. Then I turned inward. I am going to go to school to get my doctorate and expect to achieve a certain level of credibility because of my status as a Doctor. However, the world at large, especially older people, does not set as much stock in having a degree as those of us in the midst of academia. My goal should no longer be to get a doctorate so that people will read the works I write because the by-line reads “Dr. Maria Cecilia Rocha” rather I should get my doctorate so that I can know enough to write things that people will read and benefit from with or without the title of “Dr.” in the by-line.

giving and taking

Sitting in chapel listening to "YOU GIVE AND TAKE AWAY" being sung over and over got me to thinking about the idea of God giving us something and then taking it away.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
Truly giving something is without expecting anything back or having any intention of relinquishing the gift. We're all familiar with the name given those people who take back gifts, "indian givers". The scripture verse "the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away" paints God as some kind of Indian-giver. Is God allowed to do that?
He has the power, of this I'm sure, but if he is of such a pure nature how is it that he can purely give and then take away and not be sending us mixed ideas of giving?