Site up

Hey guys!

Things are taken care of and my website is back up...www.briannak.org

new site

hey everyone!!

so i'm gonna abandon this blog for awhile in lieu of my new website devoted to my opportunities to serve overseas in the coming months.  The home page is a blog that i will update so check in on that!!

www.briannak.org

much love!

a speakin' weeken'(d)

hey yall!!

So I would love your prayers for me this weekend. It's been a phenomenal couple weeks seeing the Lord open up doors and answer prayers...specifically as it regards the opportunity to use my gifting with public speaking/preaching/teaching.  I have had multiple opportunities at Multnomah to read poetry (one was my own piece of spoken word--my first time reading one of my open pieces in a big venue like that) and I've been really encouraged through these. This weekend is full and I would love for you to uphold and cover me--

Tonight: Junior Senior Banquet at Multnomah:  I have 15 minutes to share a life lesson. I'll be speaking on our dreams-- risking it all and not playing it safe!

Tomorrow: I'm going to be a workshop presenter at the New Wine, New Wineskins conference on faith and the arts, a conference entitled Created to Create. If you follow the link you can read the summary on the discussion I'll be leading. This particularly feels way over my head and off my grid as I've never considered myself an artist or thought a ton about art in the Christ-following community...I definitely could use your prayers for wisdom to lead a discussion that would be fruitful for those involved!

Sunday: One of my elders just called and asked me to read 2 Corinthians 5 at church! Eric Knox, our founding pastor is in town from LA so it's gonna be a packed house and full of energy! Anyway, he wants someone to read Scripture and I get to do it! I've never been asked to do anything like this in our church so I'm really excited for the opportunity to read God's Word before Eric's message. Pray that I'll read with emotion and thought that would reflect the intent and passion of the author/Author!!  

I feel super encouraged by how these doors have opened. I'm nervous and intimidated, but also super excited!  It makes me feel an increase sense of expectation for the new season the Lord is ushering me into!! Please pray for me to be on my knees before the Lord as I stand before people and that I would truly be for His Name and not my own.

Much love...

itinerary taking shape

most of you know that i'm taking off on a vision/mission trip in the next couple months. i'll be sending out letters etc. soon and a friend will be starting a web page where I'll share more of my vision and heart behind it all...but for now, here is a itinerary.  I would LOVE for you to start praying now!!  I will need to raise money and take care of a ton of other details to be gone this long. A big thing on my mind right now is finding the right renter for my condo from June-August. I'd like to leave it fully furnished if possible!  As things take shape I am getting very excited for how the Lord will work in and through me and in the process which is a HUGE step of faith for me.  In the next couple of weeks the web page will hopefully be up that will have some videos and other good stuff!!

Okay so never mind... i tried to paste the itinerary and it didn't work.  So very briefly...here's what i know so far:

Israel June 13-July 7th

Turkey July 7th - July 31st

Europe August

Portland September

Colombia Oct. 12-Nov.12 

Thanks and Love!

on "falling"...prompted by The Bachelor

True confessions:  I watched the season finale of The Bachelor a week ago.  I know what you're thinking, pathetic right?  Blame it on a good friend who shall remain nameless (what's up Dre?!!) having me watch last seasons finale this summer. Well last seasons looser is this year's Bachelor and he's from my hometown. The rest is history.  So anyway, I watched it and went to bed disturb and frustrated. The next morning I woke and some thoughts on falling poured out. Maybe it's because I've never fallen.  I've loved.  But I've never fallen in love, as we say...at least I don't think so. I confess, I don't think I could even tell you what falling in love really means.

A good friend of mine spent a number of months in Sri Lanka and then travelled in India.  He met a young Indian couple in their early 20's who were on their honeymoon. He said that they were madly "in love."  The catch?  They'd met only a week ago after their families arranged their marriage.  I wonder how much their cultural tradition prepares them to choose love and how much ours prepares us for "when it's good for me love." Well anyway...here are some thoughts on falling from my journal the morning after the Bachelor. Bare in mind, my thoughts may be slightly unbalanced as they were a reaction...and reactions tend to be a bit more extreme than responses. While books have been written on love, I concede that this is only a small blurb sparked by a silly show, incomplete at best. I'll gladly receive correction for my inexperience.

Excerpt from 3.3.09

"I wake this morning considering the absurdity of love in this world--it's utter brokenness and the betrayal and deception that seems inherent in it. For in entrusting one's heart to another there is the unconscious belief that we will not be broken by the love--that it won't inflict pain, that the lover will not disappoint (and that love won't cost). There are few who would be so foolish as to speak this, but all feel this hope--this expectation and longing for perfect love. And I consider the absolute agony that we subject ourselves to by loving at all. And how can love be offered in one moment and in the next moment torn away? How could it be that love is pronounced with passion and then rescinded in numbness or anger all in the name of "following one's heart" (that is uncontrollable as to its wants)? We speak as if the will has no role in loving and that love itself is an idol to which we must bow--an idol who controls us as we bow in service to it. I doubt whether we "fall" into love at all. Maybe we fall into ecstasy, obsession, attraction, (desire) or fiery passion, but love?  I am not confident that love, by it's true definition, can be fallen into, though if someone can prove otherwise I will gladly stand corrected.

If I look for perfect love my eyes can look only to You, and when looking to You I cannot look merely at miracles and profound messages of truth. I cannot look to You and find only quiet walks on the seashore or revelations of light on the mountain top. For if in looking for love I find You, surely I find you supremely on the cross--bloodied for your Bride. And there, on the cross I find all my conceptions of love shattered in a grotesquely beautiful way, for You did not "fall" into the cross, You collided with it. Gethsemane's tears of blood are evidence enough of this collision between want and want. Surely You did not want the cross, but You did want your Bride. And so, in love You chose want over want-your Bride over feelings. And these feelings are rivaled by none of our flimsy and futile excuses (often carrying our same broken rhetoric) of "falling out." For surely if there was a time to use this escape clause it would have been now, when the literal weight of the world was on Your shoulders. Here, when love would cost You Your very self, surely You could have declared, "I've fallen out of love" and left your Bride on a broken altar of selfish sacrifice, burned to the core of her heart and left alone. Instead, You were left alone...because you loved. You did not fall into the cross. You chose it. You chose it in love, full of passion of a far deeper nature and a faithfulness incomprehensible. This was the Passion...and still is is our greatest light onto true passion.  You chose your Bride at infinite cost. IN LOVE You chose...and this was your fall--Your descent into the grave in love, that love itself might be redeemed--bought from its slave holders who manipulate it to be merely a shadowy and ethereal feeling absent of power or culpability. 

Does love constrain a person or does a person constrain love? Perhaps this is the question we've been asking all along. When love is love, defined by the cross alone, is not our answer simply "yes?" Love constrains us to love the beloved, but also we constrain love, receiving it from its Source and choosing its manifestation. Love is far more tangible than we have made it. Love acts. Surely love feels, but more than feels, it acts. As Kierkegaard would say: love has works. We choose to love against all odds and in the face of great pain we choose love. Lewis says that "the only place outside of heaven where one can be completely safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is hell." So we choose love. Let us be careful not to choose loves shadow, but love itself--not the copy, but the authentic. When faced with the pain of love, what a privilege we have to know in death Love Himself."

copyright 2009 Brianna R. Knuckey

thoughts on 30

some of you may not know...but as of 6.1.09 I will no longer be working at multnomah. long story short...it's time to go...time to leave home that has at many times felt to be both my incubator and my prison.  still it has been home. it's time to go..

on 1.26 i turned 30, so here are some thoughts reflecting on the ten years, eight of which have been invested in some form at multnomah. so also these are thoughts looking to the next decade...and each after that. 

(from 1.25)

 things are not as i had hoped they would be when i reached this marker. still, things are beautiful. the road has been exactly as it must have been, accomplishing your purposes even while failing some of my own. ultimately, you have been good in the mess and have been preparing me as only you know how. i would not have chosen the pain in the past 10 years, but in your goodness, you chose it for me. it is good. you are good. these are things my heart could not believe four years ago. today i can say them again with confidence and with hope. in this 30th year i will leave home, and in a strange way i feel the opportunity to reclaim the dreams, passion and vision of 10 years ago--choosing in this new season a risky faith--wild adventure over the lures of safety and security. 10 years ago i staked my life on the truth that I am safer in your will in a dangerous place than away from your will in  safe place. all safety is an illusion...i don't have control. many were fearful for me, but with you i had not fear but eager expectation to meet you in the place that even your people had once abandoned. and i did meet you--in the need, in the brokenness, in the mess--as i never had before. 

it is harder to leave security now at 30 than it was at 20, but this is the life i've said that i wanted and i find myself again with the choice to live it. i don't want to see myself in 10 years living my life in fear--arranging for my own security and barricading myself from the world with a white picket fence. if i'm called to comfort, praise God. i do not seek pain like a suicide, but i also will not avoid it if you lead me to it. the point is that anywhere at anytime i want to follow...and so live with no regret. looking back at age 50 with shattered dreams in the wake of selfish pursuit or deadly fear is a thought that motivates me now to take hold of what you've called me to and created me for. i don't want a bookshelf of dreams lined neatly without ever having been read. i don't want to look back thinking that i was called to something that I did not do and given a dream or vision that I was too fearful to pursue. I'd rather have dreams torn apart and mended-- books with pages ripped to pieces then taped back together--than have a dusty and pristine collection of dreams emptied of all vibrancy and full of only remorse. 

i feel not like the clock is ticking forward, eating my days away, but rather that it flows backward, awakening a lucid delight of youth ideals and the boldness of the innocent. it seems that age often grows fear. i long that age would see my fears ravaged by faith...that I would have greater boldness at 50 than I do at 30. this will demand that i kick against the goads for the rest of my life--fiercely battling all my desires for accomplishment, success, accolade, comfort and safety. it will require me...to battle me. I don't want the life of my choosing because i would choose easy. i want the life of your choosing, for you will choose the truly beautiful. 

party like it's 1999...2009!

 I just love that I was able to get a night shot of the moon. I've never been able to with another camera! This is a pic from my balcony looking East toward the river. 
Westbank Esplanade in Portland with the Marcum Bridge in the background
Dre and I after driving with Cami from Tacoma to Seattle! 
Me (the cookie contest winner), Bob the judge, and my dad the runner up of the annual cookie decorating contest!
dad and mom in the cauldesace on Christmas Day!
an autumn leaf just fallen before the "arctic blast" (as the local news heralded the winter storm)
underneath the hawthorne bridge


Time flies!  I remember that song when it was way before 99...now it's way past. WHEW!  Here's a few pix from my month long vacation. I had a fabulous time with my fam for a week in Seattle with the most snow fall I've ever seen before.  We had a real white Christmas for the first time since 6th grade! I was able to see many fabulous friends in town from California (thanks for making time Potter's and Stepanian's), and friends that I had not connected with in months. It's been super super encouraging to be with people who know me and who SEE me for me.  The time in rich relationship has reminded me that there is a future and a hope...and I am excited to see what's coming!

Thanks to the IRS deciding to give me back money they borrowed and also due to my parents generosity for graduation and Christmas, I finally broke down and bought a digital SLR camera. The non-people pix are a few of my favorite shots so far. I barely know how to use it, but i'll be learning in the coming weeks! YAY!!