Of Blessings and Light Poles

So I was walking down Franklin Street this morning and I got stopped at the light waiting for the little walking man to appear. I decided to take a look around at my surroundings. The gum spots on Franklin Street and I have a pretty close relationship- I stare at them intently while I'm studiously avoiding looking anyone in the eye because I don't want that awkward eye contact and because it's much easier to avoid a conversation if you don't see the person that you should, in theory, have a conversation with. Much easier than ducking into a store to avoid talking to Washburn. If you've taken Mechanics, you know what I mean.

But as close as I am with the gum spots, I've never had the chance to notice the light pole on the corner, where the signs for Franklin and Columbia were dismantled that eventful April Sunday. The pole has some history. It's covered in staples interspersed with nails and spotted with a few pieces of paper that have been separated from the fliers that previously decorated the dark wood of the pole. Hundreds of people, maybe, have stuck their slogans on this former tree and left them there for the world to see. Stoically it stands, surveying the street and the sidewalk, never commenting on its abuse as it remains there, unwavering, a faithful spokesperson for anyone with a staple gun and a printer to the good people of Chapel Hill and the hordes of visitors to campus.

Sometimes I feel like the light pole. I feel like anything and everything tries to stick itself to me, tries to make me represent whatever it is that they're proclaiming to the world. All those fliers for church events and the programs for concerts and the schedules for things and the clubs and the organizations and the opinions and the books and the movies and the pictures and the ideas, all these things are just stapled onto me, covering me up, wrapping me like some gag gift of a person.

And why wouldn't they? I mean, let's face it, humility out the door, I'm not a bad spokesperson. In the grand scheme of things, I'm pretty much always someone you wouldn't mind representing your cause or your organization. I'm pretty middle class and with a little bit of work, I can look much better. I might not be the best looking kid on the block, but I'm not terribly ugly, and there's nothing that airbrushing won't fix these days. I go to a great university, I make good (read decent) grades, I smile, I'm responsible, I have a diverse interest in things, I'm knowledgeable and I'm nice to talk to most days. I come from a pretty good place in society. My life has been wonderful and it's easy to see the ways I've been blessed. I'm pretty much a walking testimony of what God can do when He's feeling generous. Or, for those of you who don't really go for the whole deity aspect of things, I'm a product of what middle class suburbia and a couple of strokes of wonderful luck can do for a person. I have some prospects. I can be successful. Parents wouldn't mind it if their kids grew up to be me and that's just on potential. I can fit in in most groups and levels of society and even though I feel like an awkward bridge on the inside most times, I'm OK on the outside. So plaster your signs away. I'll be happy to carry your logos for you.

But see, that's the problem, I think. I have so much. No matter how much I highlight what I don't have in my mind, no matter how many nights I spend thinking about how much I wish for things in life to start happening to me again, I know that I have been uniquely blessed and looked after. I know that there is a future in my life and that everything, good and bad, will make me into a better person if I use it the right way. I can explain away my tiny little pains with elaborate dogmatic turns because life has been good to me and I try to ignore the thoughts of what I'll become when life isn't so good to me anymore. I can smile because God has always provided for me and when I chance it, I can see His hand in my life.

And why is that a problem? you may ask. The problem comes not in what I have, but in what others don't have. What makes me so special that I deserve these wonderful things? What's so great about me that I can have these wonderful people in my life to encourage me and make me better, to be my friends and help me see the world? Why should the money always be there for me? Why should it always work for the best for me? Why am I the one reading about the floods and the fires and the violence? I can tell you right now that I'm not any better than those people, people whose situation is so different from mine. They are still beautiful human beings and they deserve as much as I have, even more. So why am I so blessed? And why can't they be too?

No, this is a really big issue for me. Like, maybe they're blessed in different ways, like blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God kind of blessed. Or maybe they're really blessed through their trials and they're better and stronger people. Maybe they'll be given wisdom and courage so they can help someone else who's going through the same thing. You know, maybe they'll have a testimony about it. And anyway, it's all going to even out in the end, you know, the rough places will be made plain and every valley shall be exalted for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it. And when all of those explanations don't seem good enough anymore, when I don't want to just trust that it's going to be fair one day, that grace is going to pour down on everyone, not just the ridiculously blessed, when I actually want to go make it fair, what then? Because I despair when I think about this.This haunts me when I let myself think about it. Do you trust that the kingdom's going to come or do you bring the kingdom to you? And if you bring the kingdom to you, why don't we do it more? Why is the kingdom so perpetually far away when we've had 2,000 years of history to bring it here, to the people who really need it?

Why are all the posters on Franklin Street? It's not like the light pole is going to go spread Your words to the people who need to hear it most.

But then, maybe it should.

Observations.

I'm not super coherent right now (it's summer and I still procrastinate until the night my paper is due to write it... tsk tsk) due to lack of sleep and a lot of time spent around children, LEGOs and stars so I figured I'd let you in on some of my observations over the past few days. Enjoy!

Love your life.
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If the guy sitting across from me in B-ski's isn't dating or married to the lady he's with, he should be, with the way he looks at her. Good sir, you are in love, in case you hadn't noticed.
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The best sound in the world is the sound that kids make when the lights go down in the planetarium dome and the stars come up. Happy wonder and amazement. Favorite.
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There's an artificial ring around Earth... of satellites and space debris. We would be the planet with the trashy ring.
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Dear Boy, I have decided that this song describes our nonexistent relationship.
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Dear Future Boy, I have decided that It Ain't Over will describe our relationship.
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First public show tomorrow, first public show tomorrow, first public show- what do you mean, my laser pointer technique needs work? What am I supposed to do, sit around in the theater and practice drawing circles on the ceiling? And get paid for it? ... I love my life.
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Brown hair really stands out on white legs. I really have to shave.
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Tiberius- what an awesome name for a dog.
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The entire point of my story about my camper tackling me during Park Ranger is to point out the fact that children can be the sweetest things- the game stopped on the dime after I hit the dirt and several of my campers rushed to my side, picking up my water bottle and sunglasses and helping me up. Too bad I missed out on telling that part to my boss, who now thinks I'm complaining about being beat up by a 4th grader.
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I want God to be wasteful too. 
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If one of your campers shares your boss's boss's last name, chances are you should check on that before he walks up with your boss's boss while you're trying to subdue a munchkin uprising over whether an octopus can really predict the outcome of the world cup.(I cheered for Spain the whole way. Now if only I had made bets on that, I wouldn't have to worry about my job security.)
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I never knew air could be so solid before. Should you have to feel like you're pushing and invisible wall as you walk outside? A solid, invisible, sweat-creating wall.
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My education class wasn't entirely useless- I was reminded of tricky situations that you should be aware of too: http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/07/19/ncschools.resegregation.rally/
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I have never worked so hard to build a poorly functioning trebuchet than I did today, after my camper said, "This'll be my fifth failure this week!" No, young sir, you are not going to fail this time, even if I have to make an oddly shaped contraption out of your base and hold it in place as it swings wildly, almost nailing your fellow builder in the head with a tiny LEGO connector piece that I couldn't find later.
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You're talking to me! You're talking to me! You're talking to me! And... now you're gone.
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I desperately wish you'd never leave.
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I talk about raptors a lot.
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So do these guys.
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I compulsively sing along to songs I hear that I know.
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You know that the light that hits your eyes from stars is coming from an incredible distance- little photons that have fought the vast emptiness of space to reach you here. The least you can do is look up.
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Good Line

As some of you may have heard, my cousin died Saturday night. He served two tours in Iraq, was enrolled in college for the fall and was settling back into life in Pennsylvania. The local newspaper had an article: Mishap kills Tyrone Veteran.He was twenty-two.

Twenty-two.

Veterans are old men who served in World War II or Korea or Vietnam or at latest, the Gulf Wars. Veterans aren't men a year older than me. Veterans aren't twenty-two. People who are twenty-two don't have to go away and fight for their countries and see things that no person of any age should have to see. And they should not have to survive all of that, live through all of that, only to come back to die in an accident, a pointless tragedy that brings more pain to their family than a death overseas might.

Veterans are twenty-two. Veterans are nineteen. Veterans are men and women who have fought because their country asked for someone to fight, who have been courageous because that is what their path in life demanded of them. There is a whole new generation of veterans. Remember them. Treat them well. Understand them and respect them. Make them proud of the land they fight for.

I just don't see how it's fair, how it could ever be fair, how it could ever be right. That's my cousin. My cousin. My aunt's son. Would I be making a fuss over someone else's son in the paper? No, for better or for worse, I don't go looking through the paper to see the unfairness and pain in the world, though, truth be told, I wouldn't have far to look. This one story was brought to me. And it's not right.

It's not right that I should be here fine and someone else shouldn't have the chance to live out the rest of their life. It's not right that I should have the chance to worry about tiny things like my current odd propensity to be socially awkward (I apologize ahead of time, I must not have spent enough time around people). It's not right that I should have the time to maintain all these regrets, things I've said that I didn't mean to be taken that way, actions I've taken, actions I haven't taken, things I haven't said. I have the chance every day of my life to breathe again free air and start over. I have the chance to live a great life, I have the opportunity to be wonderful for someone, I have the whole world in front of me. The parents have the rest of my life to be proud of me, to talk to me, to hug me, to tell stories about me and watch me be embarrassed, to see me grow up, start a family, to see me have children of my own. They don't have to bury their child.

My mom was sending me the link to the article on Chris and she told me to keep the family in my prayers because "I think you have a good line to God." Really God, do I? Do I have a good line to You? Does that mean that if I had kept on praying once he got back from Iraq, my family wouldn't be gathering for another funeral? Does that mean that You'll explain it all to me, that you'll drop comforting phrases down from heaven to heal the heart of my aunts and uncles, my cousins, my grandparents, my parents? Does this mean that You'll make it at least bearable? And is that all the mercy I have saved up on my account?

Make Every Place Love

[I don't think this one needs a warning. Maybe a strong caution?]

Love is a place. And I think I just left it.

I came back home after work and washed the last of the pool out of my hair. Don't get me wrong, it's been a comfort these past couple of shifts to have that familiar yet vaguely unpleasant smell in my nose as I wash dishes and scrub floors and occasionally serve people ice cream, but I don't love it so much that I'd keep it around. After the shower, I sat down to my computer and began searching for someone else's words to describe what it's like to love a place.

No one talks about that. Well, and then some do. But you can't quote James Taylor unless you're talking about Carolina (dark and silent late last night I think I might have heard the highway calling) and no one seems to really talk just about loving a place in general, they just talk about the place they love. So I guess three pages into "place quotes" and one awesome youtube video with Ten/Rose and the song Love is a Place later, I'm stuck having to find my own words to describe what it's like to love this place.

I just don't want to fail at telling you what it felt like to leave camp for the last time this summer, knowing it's the last. There's the camp sign that says Never will I leave you. Never will I forsake you and I couldn't even look at that. Pray for a thousand years that He'll be faithful to that for these wonderful little people who take my heart away. I'm hiding under my sunglasses with the air conditioning on high and the green leafy dark of a Thursday afternoon out in the woods is peeking in through my windshield. It seems like every curve of the road that's taking me away is fighting against me. There's this tug on my stomach, something pulling me back all the time. I absolutely hate that this isn't the first time I've felt that.

I thought about saying good-bye to everything. I'd drive up to the gazebo (What's a ka-see-bo? One of my favorite camper questions) and sit on the swing and just feel the Spirit move the air around. I'd walk into the back of the Lamb's Chapel and the Shepherd's Shed and I'd pay my respects, remembering so many different songs. I wonder which ones I'd pick to play through my head as I find the exact corners that I see God in these spaces. I'd be tempted to walk up to the cabin, but I know it's not mine now. The poster I left two summers ago is as much a part of the upstairs wall as the second half of the God is Great! poster that's lived there ever since I've seen the place, but I can't take the cabin away from the counselors who stay there now. And I'd want to say good-bye to the campfire and remember its laugh. I'd want to go to the pond and feel its peace once again and go to the creek and let its waters freeze my bare feet one more time. I'd smile at the pool and the field where my campers fell asleep as I spent entirely too much time looking to the stars and not to them.

That place is never empty. It's like the ghosts of campers past float around and rustle the leaves (Have you ever seen a tree laugh?) and whistle through screens and windows. "There is nothing like returning back to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered" - Nelson Mandela. Even though I know it's not, I feel like camp is eternal and changeless. The faces change, the staff comes and goes, but if you told me God was hiding in one place, this would be my first guess. He touches somewhere and the feeling remains. You could take away the cabins and the road and the pool and the barn and camp would still be there.

OK, this is dumb. But how else do you pay tribute to the place where you grew up? What else do you say to commemorate four summers (five summers if you count where my brain was last summer... six if you count the all-too-short time that I spent there these past three weeks)? Beautiful souls. Maybe it's a trick of the light out there, but I feel like anyone who walks in there has a beautiful soul again, no matter the mess we make of it when we walk out.

Listen, I just wanted it to know how much it meant to me. The summer before my freshman year, I went to CTOPs in the middle of the summer, in the middle of camp. While I was at orientation, my heart was at camp, for a thousand confused reasons, and for a thousand more clear ones, and I spent my free time writing notes of encouragement to the staff members that I'd give to them when I got back in a few days. Now I don't think my senior year will be long enough to fill my heart with enough Chapel Hill to last me a lifetime (goodness knows I'm going to try) but I really think in some weird way that I've had all I need of camp, and someone determined a while ago that it had all it needed of me. Someone else needs an incubator for their soul, a reminder that God loves them too (that God really, truly, deeply, honestly, faithfully, courageously, unforgivably loves them too) and a reason to stand up for people whose legs have been knocked out from underneath them, to speak up for people whose voices have been weakened and to work for those people who deserve more out of life than life's seen fit to give them. Someone else must need a living bible to teach them the important things about faith, and the fun things about faith, and the awesome and unspeakable joys that faithfully doing work with God can bring.

Someone else must need to feel like they're worth something again.

God, take that place and make it beautiful for someone else. Keep my campers safe. Be with the staff. Work through my beaten down words to find the heart that's forgotten to praise You and make it whole again. God, I wince to see the Jesus camp that this whole story is going to be reduced to. Breathe into my life. What a miracle You'll work if You can make every place Love.

First

So I am eternally jealous of people who make connections with other people. I watch other people care about each other and I wonder why that's never me. One of my friends was talking about her insecurities and she said, "I wonder why I'm never the first in anyone's life." It was so perfectly me that I had to say it again.

I hate being made a liar even more than I hate being a liar. I went over to camp on Monday and helped out with the swim test (and swam more than I have in a year, darn you, UNC pools) and ran away to work. I went to camp on Tuesday and helped out at the pool and ran away to class. Just as I was leaving, one of my campers from two years ago came over and said, "Where are you going? I only came over here because you were here." I laughed it off and said, "Well, I'll be here tomorrow, so you can come over here tomorrow."

I wasn't there tomorrow.

My older brother came back from China on Thursday. He made it back to North Carolina on Friday. I spent Wednesday cleaning out his room in the basement, discovering a new telescope (yes!), and inhaling loads and loads of dust. And making friends with spiders. I'm going soft in my old age- I almost felt bad tearing down their homes and shooing them out of the basement. So I didn't go to camp on Wednesday. I didn't go to camp on Thursday. I'm trying to decide what I actually did this week. I worked. I threw ice cream. I made tips. I deck brushed that entire backroom floor and my shoulder still hurts. I wallowed in self-pity, I think.

I went to camp on Friday. Friday mornings are the opposite of Sunday mornings, in my book. They're the last chance I have to see these wonderful people who have come into my life and the day that I have to decide whether they get to come into mine. Other counselors would give away their phone numbers and their addresses. It took me four years to give away my address and my phone number, and even then, it was to the kids who I trusted enough, the ones I wanted to know outside of the five days a year I saw them. So I guess the reason I'm not first in anyone's life is because no one's first in mine.

I really came on Friday morning to see this one camper again. It's her last year and she wants to go to UNC and she smiled and hugged me when I showed up at lunch on Monday and she was one of the hardest campers I ever had to deal with, which makes her one of the best. She left and I hugged her goodbye and that was that. And then she friended me on Facebook and that makes me smile immensely.

But I was watching a group of kids after everyone else had gotten picked up and while the staff was having their meeting. I really wanted to sit in on the meeting, to tell the counselors that morning devotions really do help, because you're putting something in at the beginning of the day. I mean, I love to sleep and even I would recommend that half an hour. And I recommend sleeping and praying and talking with your campers, getting to know them, loving them, caring for them, working with them because that's what you're here for. I wanted to share four summers' worth of rather hard-won wisdom. I watched kids instead, so I guess I was really meant to learn instead of teach on Friday.

Israel has been coming to camp for four summers. I remember him. He can do awesome flips on the trampoline, I found out, but he alternates between wanting you to love him and shutting off. For instance, I did a flip on the trampoline (OK, it's half a flip, I land on my butt, but it's the best I can do) and while the girls were trying to reenact the weird sideways twist I did (darn bulging disk), Israel said, over and over again, "No, that was tight. That was awesome." Here's this kid who gets big and tries to push everyone around the second anyone even thinks of making less of him, and he's complimenting my pathetic little flip. These are the best kids, you know that? They are wonderful, I don't care what you say. They will never be high risk as long as there's someone there to love them like they deserve to be loved. But you will label them and you will talk about them in the staff room and you will pass them on the street and shake your head. Are they first in anyone's life? Because that top place is sitting there open in theirs. Someone has to love them.

One of my campers called me today. My freshman year of high school (I swear, five and half years is penance enough) two guys called me, within half an hour of each other, to ask me out. The first one said that he loved me and I think I laughed. Hopefully internally. You don't love someone when you're a freshman in high school. I've since convinced myself that you don't love someone when you're a freshman in college either. I told him that I must be first in a long list of girls and I said something else. First in a list. So that ended that one. The next one called me and i said that I couldn't go out with him because I was in love with someone else. And you know, I think I was, but that is a long long story, but that ended that call. And ever since, I always tend to wonder where I am on someone's list when they're calling to ask for something.

I didn't wonder when Hannah called because it doesn't matter. I'm in her life, no matter how failingly,and all I want to do is help. She told me to pray because her cousin, she's been praying, and she feels like He's not listening. I mean, what do you tell someone who says that God's not listening? "Oh, what a coincidence, He's not listening to me either"? "Oh, you just need to pray harder"? I will never say that. "You just gotta have faith." I wish they didn't sound so empty. It was weird, the second I hung up, I prayed. And I had no clue what to pray for and I had no clue if it's going to work or what it's going to do, but these words came to me and I said them to the great powers in the sky. And why on earth would God listen to me? There are so many more qualified, more faithful people for Him to listen to, better people who are honest and true and less stubborn and obedient and unquestioning. There are people who don't have reasons to list for why God shouldn't listen to them. Why should He listen to me?

Because He loves me. And you. Everyone. And in some cases, it's this love that would be pathetic coming from anyone else, because it's never going to be returned. They don't even know He exists. Some people get confused, some don't care, some don't need it, some don't want it, some have somebody else. Some love Him, some don't and that's your business. Mine is to be amazed. Amazed, because, no matter what happens, He listens. You and I and six billion other people break His heart daily and He listens and He loves and He never lets go. That doesn't have to change your world and I'll never understand why it doesn't change His, but it stops mine from spinning.

Great thing is, He doesn't want to be first. He only wants to be everything.

Quotes

I'm practicing for my day of silent meditation on Saturday which I am surprisingly pumped for. I know you're probably waiting for words that are from me and not from anybody else, but as I just realized, every other word of mine currently is the word awesome, so I clearly need a break to stop the chaos. But. Quotations abound in my life and a friend of a friend of mine (Ah Facebook!) had several wonderful quotes that I figured I'd share. And, since I'm revamping my quote section of that book of faces (hahah did anyone see that episode of The Office where Jim wrote book on his face and Darryl didn't get it so he said, "Yes, I am popular social networking site, known as BookFace"? ... And that's why I suck at telling jokes) I'm going to put mine on here as well, with the open invitation for anyone to share other awesome ones. The end. Well, except not really. But you know what I mean. And cut.

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“I love UNC. I love the quad in the spring and the arboretum in the fall. I love the Pit on a sunny day and Graham Memorial Lounge on a rainy one. I love Roy [Williams] all the time. But what makes UNC truly special is not our beautiful campus, our distinguished reputation or even our basketball team. It’s us—the student body—who make UNC what it is.”
- Eve Carson

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
-Marianne Williamson

I believe in Christianity as i believe that the sun has risen, not because i see, but by it I see everything else. - C.S. Lewis

Don't be wishing you were somplace else or with someone else. Where you are right now is God's place for you, live and love and obey and believe right there. - 1 Corinthians 7:17

“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true.
-scarlet letter


“There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.” -Einstein

“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes up short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly …”
Theodore Roosevelt
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Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!
Romans 11:33

And this life sentence that I'm serving,
I admit that I'm every bit deserving
But the beauty of Grace
Is that it makes life not fair.
-Relient K

Everybody has a secret world inside of them. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside. They've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe.
-Neil Gaiman

In essentials we have unity, in nonessentials liberty and in all things we have charity (love).
-John Wesley

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit around it and pluck blackberries.
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning

George: I don’t think I’m supposed to be doing this.
Rube: Well, if somebody else were supposed to be doing this, I’d be sitting here talking to somebody else.
George: But I don’t know anything. About anything!
Rube: You think I know anything? When I’m supposed to know something, I’ll know it. When you’re supposed to know something, you’ll know it. Be patient, you’re learning. Just smell some roses already.
-Dead Like Me

Maybe it's easier to like someone else's life, and live vicariously through it, than take some responsibility to change our lives into lives we might like.-Tish Grier

A phrase of great power, and wisdom, and consolation to the soul in times of need. Allons-y! -the Tenth Doctor

The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.
-Moulin Rouge!

When life gives you lemons, make grape juice and let the world wonder how you did it.

When life kicks you, let it kick you forward.
-Kay Yow (1942-2009)

Me: I think my Prince Charming fell off a cliff, so I'm not expecting much.
Nick: Eh... you've still got one... he's just slightly
deformed

Come on, we're gonna take on the world today!
-Sarah Henson
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Sparrows and Pennies

I have such wonderful people in my life and am so many kinds of happy, I'm not entirely sure I can think straight. So some random thoughts from me to you.



The soul is healed by being with children.- Fyodor Dostoevsky
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So there's this episode of Doctor Who with the new Doctor and he's trying to get Amy to decide whether she really wants to travel with him or whether she wants to be with Rory (which she really does, goodness knows why). They flip back and forth between these two different realities and she finally realizes that she wants to be where Rory is when he dies in one of the realities. I have decided that I need this for my life.
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I forgot what I was missing.
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Notre Dame de Paris. Mon Dieu.

Pour tous les hosannas et tous les alleluias
Mais celle que je prefere
Parmi toutes ces femmes de fer
Ce sont les trois Maries
Qui sont mes meilleures amies
Il y a la petite Marie
Pour les enfants qu'on met en terre
Il y a la grande Marie
Pour les marins qui partent en mer
Mais quand je sonne la grosse Marie
Pour les amants qui se marient
C'est pas que j'ai le cœur à rire
Je l'aurais plutôt à mourir
De les voir si joyeux
De les voir si heureux
Moi qu'aucune femme ne regardera jamais dans les yeux
De les voir convoler
De les voir s'envoler
Au milieu des étoiles sous la voûte des cieux
Toutes les cloches que je sonne
Kyrie Eleison
Hosanna alleluia dies irae dies illa
Toutes ces cloches de malheur
Toutes ces cloches de bonheur
Toutes ces cloches qui n'ont jamais encore sonné pour moi

I'll love you, Quasimodo. Ah mon coeur!
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My first camper ever is going to be an eighth grader. I'm so old.
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Text from me to Sarah: "A middle aged man just rode his shopping cart down the parking lot in front of me. His wife with their baby in a stroller just followed and laughed."
From Sarah to me: "Yes! There is hope for humanity!"
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You spoke to me! I'm delighted.
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The bishop in Les Mis is my favorite Victor Hugo character. I want to be him. Also, Victor Hugo? Wonderful. Next on my reading list is Notre Dame de Paris, which is the real life version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which is not like the Disney movie. I'll ruin it for you- Phoebus is a jerk. Jerk jerk jerk jerk jerk. Also, his name is much more amusing in French.
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Why, yes, I am a BA. It says so on my ring. Also a ninja. With feet of steel.
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And a fairy lightsaber. Dollar store victory!

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I'm finding everything I'll ever need by giving up being everything.
___________________________________________________

See, I just needed you to be awesome so I can remember how unimportant I am.
___________________________________________________

No, really, my pride is going to be the death of me. It's a stubborn little sucker, I'll give it that.
___________________________________________________

"And our heart is restless until it rests in You."
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Fireflies: inside jokes that somehow still delight my soul. Also, the favorite pet of children of all ages.
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Eustace and the dragon is my favorite story in the Chronicles of Narnia, closely followed by Edmund's role in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I like redemption stories.
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"'In our world,' said Eustace, 'a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.'
'Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of.'"
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Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters has to be better than the real thing. I swear, if someone doesn't propose to Elinor soon, I'm going to put the book down. And if the Colonel doesn't marry Elinor, I am no judge of Jane Austen's plot lines. (*Note- I am no judge of Jane Austen's plot lines.*)
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I have wonderful friends. You know who you are.
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I have wonderful parents. On Facebook, my dad posts on my mom's wall (she's taking an education class):
Not doing too much homework tonight while on facebook, now are we ???
Comment by my mother: No just had to check it out before bed. Are you coming?
Comment by my father: watching tv. be there soon

Presh!
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My two rules that I contributed to camp today:
5. Be Awesome.
9. Love God.

I think I have a new motto.
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Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. (Matthew 10:29)

My Dragonflies

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar used to retell a childhood story about dragonflies to explain the difference he saw between the world inside the singularity of a black hole and the outside world around it. A dragonfly nymph, still underwater, promised his companions that he would return below the surface of the water after he had left to change and tell them what the world was like above. Of course, after he turned into a dragonfly, he couldn't come back to tell his friends what had happened.
"Will none of you in pity
To those you left behind, disclose the secret?"

Of course, none of my friends leaving for their summer trips are doing anything quite so dramatic as the dragonfly. They're certainly not falling into a black hole, and, to follow the allusion to its full significance, none of them are going off to the Great Beyond, I hope. But some are leaving, and some have already left, to do something that to me is as different from the life I lead here as a dragonfly's life is from a nymph's. You're living fully into a call and following it to the ends of the Earth. But share about it, please, for those of us left behind.

God bless you, my friends, and bring you back safe. Let good work through you so that every second of every day, though you may not feel it, you may be helped by the grace of the people around you and you may help them in return. Love deeply those whose lives you touch, taking love from that never-ending supply, so that when you come back, you'll have some left to give to us as we listen to your stories and pretend that we can share in the life you've lived. Take courage so that you can give courage to each of us so that we can find our place here to live life as fully as you are. I can't wait to see you when you come back.

With all my love,
Addie Jo

Promise

A man had a fig tree, planted in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it, but did not find any. So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, 'For three years now I've been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven't found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?'

'Sir,' the man replied, 'leave it alone for one more year, and I'll dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.'

(Luke 13:6-9)

But I Don't Want to Be Quiet

Saturday, I vacuumed up the needles and shards of colored reflective sharpness from the tree, dumping the last insignificant bits of Christmas out of the house in a pine smelling hurricane of dust and ornament debris. Happy end of Christmas break.

I had a 4 o’clock exam on the last day of exams. I walked into Phillips for my 12 o’clock around 11 and walked out afterword to miss the snow and eat pizza and walked back in around 3:30. The world got dark, my weekend plans at home were ruined by a lack of desire to drive up the mountain in the snow and I followed friends around until the Love Feast came Sunday evening and then we drove home. Me and my little brother bought the tree on Tuesday. Between decorating it and taking it down, I spent less hours with this tree than any before it.

Christmas doesn’t really start until I get home. I force my little brother to help me get the boxes down from the attic (that was a party this year with my back), I ask incessantly about the tree and I decorate it and the living room by myself after my older brother puts the lights on the tree. I got home really close to Christmas this year and I left the day after. I missed my tree time. At least one night a year, I turn on the best oldies station I can find and sit and watch the lights of the tree in the window, thinking about the reflection of my life in the music. It’s sappy and wonderful and my soul feels more (or less) human after my time with the tree.

But I just feel tired now, I think. Package me off, shove me in a freezing stadium to watch another great Carolina loss, drive me up to Chapel Hill to play basketball game after basketball game, drive me back and pack me up to head off to Atlanta, bring me back and watch me sleep. I learned a good little bit about driving in Charlotte and about the stadium there. I learned that it is not the best idea in the world to leave me by myself for the vast majority of a couple of days and so shall be seeking company for most of the rest of my life. I learned that I missed my best friend, that I’m insanely jealous of her life in Chile and that it’s not just my father that has a pile of physics questions to ask me. I learned that three nights with 5 hours of sleep pushes a person to the exhaustion point but not to the habitual life of the living dead that a week does. I learned that I listen to sermons and I respond better to worship music when I can worship through a sermon. I learned that January 2nd 2010 was a palindrome. And I learned that even though my heart breaks, I can walk by the pile of packaging that I know is a person frozen more deeply to their bones than I am by the piercing cold snap wind. That tires me.

I loved going on Passion. It was 21,000 Christian peeps descending on Atlanta for a Friday night, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday morning of worship and concerts and workshops. Wonderful. We had this thing set up downstairs where you could package bibles, pay for translations, fund small business loans for women in South America, help pay for a well, package meals, do so much more. We did great stuff there. But we clapped for it like we had cured cancer or solved global poverty. And I’m not saying that we should expect to do something like that, just a bunch of college kids in town for one weekend, but then again, shouldn’t we? Should we really limit God like that?

And I’m guilty too. I’m jealous of the time I didn’t have for my weakness, pretending that time spent in front of the bright bulbs of a Christmas tree is more important than the host of other things that I could be doing. I was recently told that I needed to be more positive about myself and I’ve thought about that. You know, humility is easy when you don’t think much of yourself, but they normally call it self depreciation at that point. I feel like it’s time for an inspirational turn-around statement. Too bad I don’t have one.

Like, I feel like I should be eternally proving myself to God, but that’s not what I’m doing when I feel like doing good in the world. It’s like I’m driven to it. I hardly ever plan on it and it’s generally given out of my ridiculous overabundance. And I don’t talk to Him because I feel like I have to (and my stomach twists around a little at the remembrance of days when I have), I talk to Him because I need to. Sometimes I need to get out anger and frustration and sometimes I need to work something out in a prayerful state because it’s a little easier to see the lies then. Oil and water. And thank goodness I’ve gotten to the point where I can’t give Him lip service. If I can’t mean the words of a hymn or a song, I won’t sing it. I don’t think the little bundle of resentment and questioning is much better but I won’t pretend around the One who knows it all anyway. I want to be honest. It’s a new feeling.

One of my favorite little things about being home is that my windows in my room face west and in the afternoons light streams in, glorious and gracefull, and the frigid white and navy of my room warms up and admits a heart again. It’s not the cold morning light that demands faithfulness and exacts guilty penance on the tired soul, it’s light that’s grown up, having lived a full day, to send love back out on the world just when it needs the confidence and strength to face the light’s absence. And there may come a day when I understand morning light, but I’d rather be afternoon light. My brain might say that the added redness is just the scattering of the longer wavelengths of light in the additional atmosphere that the light must travel through to reach my eyes later in the day and it may explain the weakness of the sunlight on a winter’s morning due to its changed angle and intensity on the ground and it may object to even presenting the idea that afternoon light is older, as if the photon that finally got released from its long journey from the sun’s fusing core is any different in the evening than in the morning, but my heart tells it to shut up just about now. One of these days, our understanding of nature is going to stop being just science and the afternoon light will help us see the worth of everything, everyone.

Ever see the brown of a normal North Carolina winter as the earth sleeps and the sun bathes a river with its last light of the day? Quietly glorious.

It's OK, Chick-Fil-A, I didn't want to go to your dumb bowl anyway

Because I'm going to be in Atlanta in two days! I'm going on Passion 2010, and, as David Crowder has been involved with Passion stuffs, I figured I'd post some lyrics which make me feel better.

There’s a darkness in my skin
My cover’s wearing thin, I believe
I’d love to start again, go back to innocent
And never leave

Don’t give up now
A break in the clouds
We could be found

There’s nothing wrong with me
It’s just that I believe things could get better
And there’s nothing wrong with love
I think it’s just enough to believe

Don’t give up now
A break in the clouds
We could be found

Rescue is coming
Rescue is coming
Rescue is coming
Rescue is coming

And there’s nothing wrong with you
And nothing left to do
But believe something bigger
And there’s nothing wrong with love
I know it’s just enough to believe

Don’t give up now
A break in the clouds
We will be found

Rescue is coming
Rescue is coming
Rescue is coming
Rescue is coming now

-Rescue is Coming, David Crowder* Band

What Would I Give

What would I give to be pure in heart
To be pure in flesh and bone
What would I give to be pure in heart
I’d give everything that I own
I’d rid my whole house of its demons of lust
And open the windows of trust
And out of those windows all fear will have flown
I’d give everything that I own

What would I give for the words of God
To come tumbling from the throne
What would I give for the words of God
I’d give everything that I own
I’d open my head and they’d roll right in
When I opened my mouth they’d roll out again
And uproot the weeds of the deeds I have sown
I’d give everything that I own

Now what would I give for my children’s strength
On the day that they stand alone
I mean what would I give for their strength to stand firm
I’d give everything that I own
I’ve wasted my life in accomplishing things
Ignoring the giver of wings
So Lord teach them to fly to the foot of your throne
I’ll give everything that I own

All I’ve accomplished, the titles I hold
My passions, position, possessions and gold
To God they must look like a thimble of foam
And it’s everything that I own
Dirty rags are all that I own

So I stand before God with my stubble and hay
He just laughs, but says there’s still a way
Because “Father, Forgive” are the words Jesus moaned
When He gave everything that He owned

So what would I give to be pure in heart
For the known to be made unknown?

-Jason Gray

And the funny thing is, out of all of the things that could occupy my head and probably should be occupying my head, all the self-righteous anger I adopt in protest at others' pain, this is what He shoves in, this song that I grudgingly put onto my MP-3 player that I reluctantly put on shuffle as I sat down to grade papers. This prayer has just been sitting here, waiting on me to come to it. It's advent is over. And though mine shouldn't be just starting, it is. Excitedly waiting, not just bewailing the hours until I can trudge away again. Oh, the things I could have been! Oh, the things that could be still. What would I give, to really mean the things I say and the things I pray, to be the person that I hoped I could be instead of the person I've settled on being? As a good friend of mine told me, never settle.

I want to fly. And I'm leaving the things that are weighing me down. One. By. One.

Realized Love From Down the Hall

He's tugging. Can you feel it?

Here is a testimony to God loving you in your lives, my friends. Or a testimony of God loving me in my life when He knows, when He knows that I don't deserve it. What kind of wonderful miracle is He working when He chooses now, when I am fully and occasionally painfully aware of how what I'm doing is so very wrong, He chooses now to pull me back to Him?

One of these days, I'll find a way to say what I'm feeling right now. And I wonder where do these dreams go, when the world gets in your way? The love of my life just waltzed in for a day yesterday and I could have floated through my day, but I have a friend who has a story that just kills that joy. I have no right to be happy. And so I'm not.

But this, friends, this is more than a boy paying me attention that I never thought I'd get again. That's gone so fast. But this, this is a pull, this is a tug, this is an Almighty storm come down to bring me back to Him. Because it doesn't matter about everything that my head put in my way. My heart came home, my heart searched better than anything my head could ever have done. My heart listened. And it's hard to ignore a hurricane, but we're so good at it, aren't we? My friends, God is good. And maybe it doesn't seem like that right now, and maybe it doesn't seem like He loves you, but believe me, He's working on you. He's working. He's working.



David Crowder Band, How He Loves (courtesy of Pam, who lives down the hall)

He is jealous for me,
Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree,
Bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.
When all of a sudden,
I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory,
And I realize just how beautiful You are,
And how great Your affections are for me.

And oh, how He loves us so,
Oh how He loves us,
How He loves us all

Yeah, He loves us,
Oh! how He loves us,
Oh! how He loves us,
Oh! how He loves.

We are His portion and He is our prize,
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes,
If grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking.
And Heaven meets earth like an unforeseen kiss,
And my heart turns violently inside of my chest,
I don’t have time to maintain these regrets,
When I think about, the way…

Rings

I went to a debate this evening between Bart Ehrman, an agnostic religious studies professor here, and Dinesh D'Souza, an author who was presenting 'the' Christian perspective. The title of the was 'God and the Problem of Suffering.' I have to say, the agnostic clearly won. I liked his points better, he had better (and unanswered) questions and he seemed much more open. Ehrman doesn't believe in the God of the Bible, the one who intervenes so often in the Old and New Testaments. He said that he couldn't know if there was or wasn't some bigger power up there and while D'Souza said something about science proving the existence of a creator and made one of his few nice points by mentioning his idea of the 'hiddeness of God,' which has apparently increased since Adam and Eve, D'Souza never flat out said that there must be a God and that God must be the one talked about in the Bible. I hated that he didn't say that. I mean, I don't know how the God of today that doesn't stop genocides and earthquakes lines up with the God of the Old Testament who talks to people, brings Israel out of Egypt and heals the sick.

But at the same time all this debate was going on, this little story was waiting for me to read it:

http://news.aol.com/article/california-nasa-telescope-sees-giant/706628?icid=mainhtmlws-maindl1link3http://news.aol.com/article/california-nasa-telescope-sees-giant/706628

There is a giant ring around Saturn and it is glorious when viewed in the infrared. Now, I'm not saying that this proves that there is a God and I'm not saying that this somehow undermines the problem of suffering, because that's a big deal to us confined to this Earth with the people we're confined with, but doesn't that make you wonder? I mean, I can see galaxies and maps of the universe, but they're all just big numbers to me. I've stopped seeing them as huge and just started seeing them. But this... makes me small. Makes us small. A billion Earths would be needed to fill in the space inside that ring. A billion copies of our planet. One billion.


From JPL (NASA)

The point is, my friends, that we are tiny and we should be thanking God for every nonsensical second of our existences that He decides to care for us, because He doesn't have to. Does He answer prayer? Does He work in our lives? Did He step down out of His heavens to bring us to Him? I mean, I don't know, but I do know that the One who sees things on scales much bigger than this and can control it is not the Person I want against me. I am so glad that by His grace, He's for me.

A Melody

I met a guy.

Well, maybe 'met' implies too recent of an acquaintance. He's older than me and he's known my family since before I was born, so I guess I've known him my whole life. I didn't think about it like that though. I grew up with him but we never talked all that much until middle school when I found out how awesome he is. He's just... he's so observant of the world around him and so concerned for other people. It's inspiring, really. I love to hear him talk about what he's done. The places he's been! I mean, he's a world traveler and it seems like he's always gotten to know the people where he's been to an absurd degree. He can tell you about an orphanage in South Africa like he grew up there or a church in Scotland like he watched it being built. He's got all these stories and he knows so much about life. Life and death and everything, it seems like. I love talking to him. You should meet his father, too. They're so similar and it's just great to see how well they get along and how much they really love each other. There's so much to learn, but you don't get caught up in that so much. When he talks, you can tell that he really, really cares about people.

So we started talking in middle school, nothing too intense. Middle schoolers, they're an odd bunch of kids. They're like mini-adults seeing the world with a pretty messed up pair of glasses and they're always convinced they're right. I'm sure that everyone who saw me and this guy together sat back and said that it was something that was going to last, but nobody said it to me. It's like Simba and Nala: you know they're going to end up together for the rest of their lives but you kinda cringe when Zazu says so. You'd rather they just found out for themselves. I think the adults in my life just let me find out for myself that this guy was the one.

It came on so gradually. I'd known him as long as I can remember and I'd always loved being around him, but I don't think I can pinpoint the day when I decided that I loved him. I think I acknowledged it once in middle school, maybe more to myself than anyone else, though people saw it. I don't think that was it, though. I don't think that I really loved him then. We had an on-again, off-again relationship in high school. High school is so distracting. There are so many other guys, so many other things to do. The world is your metaphorical oyster in high school, or at least you think it is. So I was concerned with everything that happened in high school during the year and it's hard to say that I knew that I loved him then.

We did work at the same camp for a lot of summers though. That was amazing. It was like everyone else there knew him too, he was our common thread. He's always been around in my life. I could always call him or meet up with him somewhere, but it was wonderful having him around all the time over those summers. And even though there were distractions there, too, one of which I still carry around in my heart, I really felt like that's when I fell in love with this guy. He cared so deeply for all the campers and he was willing to do anything to make their lives better. He was in all the music that I heard. It's amazing how, when you're in love, it seems like every love song is written for you. I remember moments like that, when I'm singing along to a song that seems like it was written for me and him. I miss that so much.

But even then, I didn't say too much about us. I wasn't sure. I mean, I'd said that I loved him to a lot of people, but I don't know if I had realized that I wanted to spend my life with him then. Then college came and I didn't make the time to let him come visit as much as I should have and all that mess. I met some people who straight up hated him and that amazed me. I met some people who said that they'd met him, but they didn't talk about him like I did and that confused me. I still called him pretty often, though, and we talked. And talked. And talked. And I thought a lot about how much he meant to me. Last year, I decided that I wanted a ring- I wanted the world to know that we were together and I wanted to be reminded every second of every day that I was his. I've had twenty million seconds of cold feet in between now and then. What if someone better comes along and I'm devoted to this guy? I don't think that can happen but you never know. What if I'm at the altar, what if I'm already married and I meet my soul mate? These are questions you shouldn't have. You should be so in love that there's no question- you've already met the only one for you.

Some people get love at first sight or they look across a room and that's all they needed to know. Their stories are so much better. Some people figure out through the course of a crisis that the person they hated is really the person they loved more than anything else. I don't have that. I don't have that great love story. I know I love him but I don't know why and I couldn't tell you when it started. Lately, we've been taking a break, it seems like. I didn't see him keeping his promises to me and I've forgotten what is was that made me think that he and his father were so good. And he says that he's saved the world, but it has a Hiro-esque ring to it. Save the cheerleader, save the world. The world is still not saved. I mean, I know he's still working, but I never see him at it anymore. The love songs still ring true, but it's not like it was back then. I feel like I'm reliving some kind of former glory. Son, can you play me a memory? I'm not really sure how it goes. But it's sad and it's sweet and I knew it complete when I wore a younger man's clothes.

People have been asking questions about us. Some one straight up asked me last night, if I had to pick, would I say I was in love. And I said no. But I want to be, so badly. I wanna go back to what I had. But I've grown up. I don't think I can have the same kind of relationship I had in middle school or high school or even my first year here. I want something more, but I'm not willing to commit to it. I'm scared. I'm scared of what he and I can do together. I'm scared of where he'll take me- I won't let him travel alone. There's just so much to think about and it means so much more now, when I know what love means.

We had a good talk last night, though, after I got back from going out. I'm sick of hearing about him from someone else, because you know everyone colors the story their own way when they retell it. I'm going to reread his letters to me. They were so sweet when I first got them. He made me promise to keep them around, probably just for this very time, so I'd remember him even while he's busy in other places. I don't need anyone to tell me to love him. I don't need convincing to do that- goodness, it was so weird when people tried. I'm figuring out how to love him better and then maybe one day I'll be able to shout love from the rooftops instead of whispering confusion in the chapel.

Oh, by the way, his name's Jesus. Just in case you couldn't tell.

Peut-être

Is a discovery ruined if you know it's going to happen?

It's certainly not serendipitous if you know that this is the time when you're going to 'find yourself,' whatever that means, but does that mean that you don't find yourself? Is the person you were going to be lost in the gap between what could have been and what happened just because you were expecting a change? Or do you force the change to be a different change than it was planning on being? Because I kinda like the idea that I can mess up change's eternal day planner by just thinking about it.

I think I'm expecting life to be something that it's not. I think life is rebelling a little. Since I want it to be awesome, since I have such high expectations, life is doing its absolute best to prove me wrong because goodness knows the universe would explode if Addie Jo was right about something for once. But maybe it's all for the best.

I was recently told that I seem like a big picture person. I like that. I love the phrase 'at the end of the day.' If, at the end of the day, there really is a God that for some crazy (and I mean legitimately insane) reason loves us, who are so very tiny and insignificant in comparison to Him, then believing in Him now is worth it. It gets me ready for what I'm sure will be the surprise of my existence when I finally get to know Him as He knows me. It helps me put this life in perspective. It inspires me to change to world into something better than what it is. It helps to bring me into relationships with others that I would totally shun if I didn't know that we were all looking for something bigger.

That doesn't explain me, though. In my philosophy class, we were talking about absolute space versus relative space and Leibnitz insists that if space were absolute, if we were all sitting on some big invisible 3-D coordinate grid, God would have to be arbitrary and that just makes everything bad because God is reasonable. Newton says, 'Screw you, Leibnitz, I'm right and you're wrong,' and that's all I got out of philosophy the past three weeks. But, as my professor put it, 'God is the elephant in the room,' and we took Him out of the argument. You ended up with the same result. I kinda want to do this with my life, theoretically. Take God out of it and see if you get the same result.

I mean, He's the elephant in the room in church. Or maybe that's the Holy Spirit. Jesus wasn't this nice, happy kid all the time- he said a ton of stuff just to throw people off balance (ref. placing a kid in the middle of the disciples and telling them to be like the kid). The Holy Spirit is something we're all not really comfortable with believing in. Yes, of course I have God living in me. Doesn't really jive with living with the rest of the world- they don't have God living in them. I am obviously more informed and better than they are. It's all the Holy Spirit's fault for being this big, mysterious thing that we don't get. So take it out. Take out God. Just leave Jesus as this guy who said a lot of good things and started an organization with a couple of good ideas and explain all this worship stuff as traditions and social constructs that make people comfortable and happy.

Minus God, I'm still an overly-vocal and quirky Sunday School teacher. I'm still VP-M of SAI, with all the odd phrases I throw into emails and life. I'm still a dying physics major, with all the disdain and sarcasm that must be piled on top of the unsure and fundamentally shy student who tries to sit in the corner and take notes at 1/10th the speed of light. I'm still in band, I'm still a vocal football fan, I'm still a thinking person, I still breathe. I still miss someone I have no right to miss and who does not miss me back. I'd still watch the puddles gather rain and sing and read and laugh and smile and cry. 'I apply my personality in a paste.' (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). I read Shakespeare, I watch Doctor Who, I listen to Relient K, I stare up at the stars and wish I could be one, watching the millenniums pass by as I slowly burn away and die in a glorious explosion while people an indeterminable distance away stare at my dissipating form and sigh in wonder.

But please explain to me how this little thought experiment works. I've got a bit of an epistemological issue with it. How can I say for sure that I am all those things without God? How can I say I am all those things with God? One of the guys in my learning community maintains that he knows the truth, as a Christian, but he can't prove it to anyone else. Whatever the universal truth is, he says, we can know it, but we can't prove it to someone else. God is everywhere, or He's nowhere, and they're the same thing, just stick a negative sign, by convention, in front of the second one. How can you, a human, say that He's one or the other? How can you say that you know the truth? I don't want to fall back on warm-fuzzies here, I want cold, logical facts. And the cold logical fact is that you can't.

So we get to choose. A, B or C. God exists, He doesn't, maybe. Great thing about this test- no one can tell you you're wrong. Not so great thing about this test- no one can tell you that you're right. Oh, one of them is right, but a long time ago, the test stopped being about whether God exists or not and started being about who had the better argument and was therefore the better person. So I choose to believe that God exists, that there is this eternal, omnipotent entity who for some miraculous reason loves me and cares about the state of my soul not only because you can't prove me wrong but also because I feel it. When logic fails, you have to lean back on the wonderful and terrible things that you feel and somehow the combination of that teaches you.

And I think I am that combination. I know who I am, under the layers of quirks I put on in order to make myself interesting, maybe only to myself. I think, I lean on what learned people can tell me and what makes sense out of what the learned people have told me and I learn about other things so I don't lean too heavily on the words of one agenda. But thinking leaves you alone and then you have to breathe, sit and listen, look up and wonder. You can't leave out one, though. You can't have too much of the other. And I don't think I'm the ideal balance. On any given day, my brain tells my feelings to stop being so pathetic and on another day, my feelings will tell my brain that it gets no choice in the matter. But I'm not leaving either one of the two of them at home and that's the important thing.

Is this a discovery? I think I was expecting it. So maybe I'm wrong. But I may be right.

When Your Roots Extend Beyond Your Flowerpot

Small nervous breakdown. Am I allowed to have a minor panic attack right now? I mean, I know it'll all work out, maybe not for the best, but it'll work out. And I can sit back and say I shouldn't have done this or I should have done that, so I'm not asking for sympathy... but I am asking for relief. I know I don't deserve it and I know I haven't come to You and I know that You deserve everything instead of the nothing I've been giving. All the little things are running me over- will You stomp them out for me?

Supplications. Just because I know You can. I am a hypocritical and unfaithful wretch. That's why I need You. That's why I've always needed You. Help me to see this mess as You see it and then I'll stop panicking (because an Awesome and Mighty God is in control) and I'll start to work to make it what You intended it to be, what You told us to make it when you came down to give us a fighting chance.

That's all I want- a fighting chance.

About Standards

Lafou, I'm afraid I've been thinking. A dangerous pastime, I know.

My thinking is more of the to-get-me-off-the-hook kind of thinking than anything else. I've been thinking about people and how we are and whether we're all really messed up or whether we're really OK on the inside, with a few bumps and bruises (or major amputations and gushing flesh wounds for some) on the outside. If we're all pretty much good, if par for the course is being a decent human being, then this whole savior business is a bit over the top. I mean, we'll get along just fine here, if we're all decent at the core, and then we'll see what happens afterwards, no need for divine intervention in each human life. But if we're screwed up inside and we're headed forever in the wrong direction, then we're screwed for here and the hereafter if there's no savior. So it really depends on us, how we really are, whether there's a need for me to go through all the 'saved life' trouble.

Enter Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. I've been wanting to reference this for some time (and what does that say about my life?). At the beginning of Act Two, Dr. Horrible (LOVE Neil Patrick Harris) and Penny sing about their views of the world. 'I cannot believe my eyes, how the world's filled with filth and lies,' and 'I cannot believe my eyes- is the world finally growing wise?' Penny's got the happy view, obviously, since she doesn't end the musical by being inducted into the Evil League of Evil, with good in the homeless people and Captain Hammer, corporate tool. She also sees the good in Billy, aka Doctor Horrible, but he only sees the problems in the world. Now, I'm sure that someone out there has come up with the perfect idea- combine the two together. See the bad and the good in the world and fix the bad while you cherish the good. Which is lovely, I'm all for that instead of cutting off the head of the human race, but the question still remains- is the bad from our cores, or is it from the outside? Is there good in everybody's heart, to keep safe and sound, or do we listen close to everybody's heart only to hear the breaking sound?

So say that nobody's perfect, but nobody's perfectly bad either. Can I say that? Is that right? Because it seems to me that we've all got that part of us that needs to die- in some, it's bigger than others, but remember the good thief is just as clean as the rest of us. At the same time, we've all got some good, some something that is worth saving, something that demands a savior because it cannot be allowed to perish with all the rest of the junk that we toss out when we throw in the towel at the end of our metaphorical day. If you like to toss around the world soul, I'd call that our soul. At the end of a semester talking about heaven and hell (for class credit, I may add), my last essay for my exam about the nature of the soul ended with the idea that perhaps a soul isn't something that we can identify. Maybe it's the part of us that God loves, for whatever reasons He loves us. The part worth saving.

Now to the getting-me-off-the-hook part. If everyone's broken on some level, then I'm fine if I'm broken too. Par for the course. And if I'm just as worth saving as the next person, then just being saved is enough, like the next person. Except I'm not off the hook. No matter how I reason that no one's perfect, that they don't have to be better so why do I, that I don't have to change the status-quo in my life because my life isn't really that bad, I still get stuck with this discomfort, like I know better and I'm ignoring something. I know what causes the discomfort. I know why it's here and I know what I need to do.

I just can't try hard enough to be good enough to make the discomfort go away. If it's not one thing, it's another. We're called to be better, to do better, to show the world that there is better out there and to tell them how to get to it, to work on the metaphorical evil laugh, if you will. But these results of our call are all just symptoms. The cause is something crazy-scary-terribly deep. We're not doing anything for our own sanctification, or we're not supposed to be, anyway. We're not in this to get something out of it, heaven or a better life or whatever. We are in this because we love this Man and we're ready to follow Him with everything. Christian meets the cross pretty early in Pilgrim's Progress. There's so much more to life after salvation. But you can't live it peaceably unless you're willing to live it. Every second of every day, you're called to do superhuman things not for yourself, not even for others, but for Him. You don't sneak candy bars off the line and call it part of your shift treat when you really just wanted one. You don't sleep in until 11 because you don't want to be bothered with living any more hours of life than you have to. You don't write off a kid because he's not paying attention, a problem causer and just kinda out there. You don't cut corners on any job. You don't assume that someone else is going to help. You be better because He deserves your better, your best, not your barely coping.

And you can't do this by yourself. You can't be the best every second of every day. It doesn't happen. You break down- gravity stops us, I think, or something kinda like it. The friction of a soul that's fighting the system. So after you try to do this alone and fail, you realize that you need something else and it has to be supernatural. No promises that you won't still fall, but promises that you will be what you were meant to be all along. Oh, the Holy Spirit. I wish I understood this better. Somewhere along the way, after you've promised Christ that you can indeed pick up your cross and after you've realized that the spirit might be more willing than the weak flesh, but it's not winning any races, you realize that your spirit has to be His. You have to trade out your brokenness for His peace, His wholeness, because your brokenness patched up isn't going to cut it.

But even then, you still have to pick up your mat. The wonderful thing about God is that He'll take your barely coping, He'll take your brokenness, anything you want to offer up, He's ready and willing to have because He isn't prideful like us. He doesn't say to us, 'No, you rejected me. I'm not going to take your crap anymore.' He doesn't deserve it, but we can't give Him what He deserves until He brings us to it. We have to be better- and I just found this out: To be better, you have to do better. No one's going to study for you, to make you the best in the class. Those people actually work for it. No one's going to keep you accountable every step of your every day. You've got to choose to do the supernatural- the Spirit is willing when you are. Oh, but what a choice!

Last day at Wesley. I vacuumed up a ton of hair and blue fuzz (why is the entirety of my life covered in blue fuzz? Isn't dust grey?) and I cleaned the shower and the sinks and washed some dishes and moved a couch and rearranged my room. Feeling celebratory and hoping that that one guy who was supposed to move in hadn't yet or at least didn't mind piano playing, I headed down to the sanctuary. Last time in there, just me and God chilling. Sometimes I'm not sure that He wouldn't rather me stay in my room where I can keep my hypocrisy to myself and not pretend like we're on good speaking terms when I sing to Him, but I can find Him there. Or maybe it's that I'm more willing to search for Him there. Anyway, I walked out, past the furnishings and random things that remind me of the home I grew up in and down the staircase to the bricks and chairs that remind me of the high school I should have wised up in and into the room that if it had green carpet would remind me of the sanctuary that I first sang in. You get to be privy next to the hymn that I ended on. 'Are Ye Able?'

“Are ye able,” said the Master,
“To be crucified with Me?”
“Yea,” the sturdy dreamers answered,
“To the death we follow Thee.”

Lord, we are able. Our spirits are Thine.
Remold them, make us, like Thee, divine.
Thy guiding radiance above us shall be
A beacon to God, to love and loyalty.

I've been a sturdy dreamer (Mark 10:35-40, BTW) for quite some time. I'm a talker. I'm big on telling people to do, but I'm not so big on actually doing, you understand. That's why there's a refrain, so people like me can get it into our minds by singing it multiple times. Yes, I'm able, when my spirit's His and I'm made like Him. And it has happy consequences. Now I know the fine print is important and that you have to do everything in the fine print to make life work out, but that's not the point. The point, my friends, the point is, that I am able. So I will.

A Folk Tale

There once lived a beautiful Princess in a castle in the clouds, the daughter of the powerful Sky King and Queen. The Princess sat at her loom every day, weaving the cloth of the rainbows and gazing out her window to see the best places in the sky to place her beautiful cloth. It happened one day that she saw a Herdsman far below one day as she looked to cast out her cloth and immediately fell in love with him. She left her castle in the clouds with her work unfinished to meet the Herdsman.

The Sky Queen was very proud of her daughter's work, and very jealous of her daughter's time. When she found that her daughter had left the heavens for a man on earth, she called the Princess back up into the sky and locked her in the castle far away from the herdsman. But the Sky King took pity on the lovers and brought the Herdsman to his kingdom so the two could be nearer each other. To appease his wife and to keep his daughter weaving the rainbows, he placed a river between the Herdsman and the Princess so they may never truly be together. However, it is said that once in a year, blackbirds and magpies are allowed to fly up to the sky and make a bridge across the Milky Way to let the two lovers, called Vega and Altair by us, come across and meet each other. If there is a rainbow in the sky that day, the Princess has thrown her weaving away early, in a rush to meet her love before the sun sets and the bridge disappears.

The image below is a picture of the summer triangle take by the Hubble. The two bright stars on either side of the Milky Way are Vega, above it, and Altair, below it. Vega is in the constellation of Lyra the harp, for the more curious of you, and Altair in Aquilla the Eagle. The other star, the third brightest in the picture, looks like it's leading the Milky Way forward. It's Deneb, in the constellation of Cygnus, the only summer constellation besides Ursa Major and Ursa Minor I can point out with any reliability. If you look at the photo for a second, you'll see two stars above and below the Milky Way near Deneb, and three stars in an almost line pointing right. They're the arms of the Northern Cross, the rest of Cygnus the Swan.



There's a river between me and my Love. Maybe the world put it there, maybe I did, maybe it's been there and I keep on running back across it because life on the other side isn't as easy as I thought it would be. Somebody back in the day linked up a bunch of stars together in their mind and called it Cygnus. There's a black hole in that part of the sky- I've looked at its noise with a radio telescope. That black hole got the constellation stuck in my mind and I think it's wonderful how a week of research a summer ago and a Japanese and Chinese fable told to me a week ago serve to keep it always in my mind that there's a cross in the middle of the Milky Way, when I have such a tendency to forget that it's been in the river all along.

Thundering Whispers

I've been racing in front of the storm for a while.

It's my favorite kind of weather, right before a storm. The wind picks up, huge clouds billow around, the air smells like rain and the world waits, anticipating the rain that comes to clean the ground and the thunder that comes to shake loose our hearts. I love the smell of rain, especially summer rain, coming down onto hot pavement and giving the world a momentary reprieve from the sun. It makes me feel alive, to listen to the electricity crackling in the air and let the wind blow through my hair and the rain kiss my face. I know that one day, far too soon, these things will abandon me to the deadness of the dull winter sun or the chillness of a sad winter rain. I hang onto my summer storms, running out from the dry safety of a building to dance in them, sing in them, stand in them, as long as the ground holds me up and the air lets me breathe. How much more do I hang onto those fleeting moments before the sky opens up, when you can still see a little bit of the blue heaven before the clouds cover it entirely, when the wind greets you like an old friend and challenges you to a race before the world? These things, my friends, are glorious and come into my life just rarely enough to be always welcome.

And yet, tonight I wanted to run from the storm, from any indication of a storm. The story starts mundanely, as all the best ones do- business wasn't exactly booming on Franklin and I left work early. On the way out, I passed the homeless man sitting on the bench outside of the store, almost hid my face from the two down the road because I had bought them dinner last Monday and didn't have the same means tonight and power walked down to the corner before the lightning caught my eye. My heart sped up, my chest felt tight and I'm sure a little panic flashed over my face. I cross the street and another glance up at the sky finally links back into my mind that my bike is sitting behind Graham Memorial with its seat rain-cover on, waiting on me to save it from the storm. Thunder cracks, and not too far in the distance as I speed down the other side of Franklin. On the steps of University United Methodist, the homeless man from in front of Cold Stone fluffs his newspaper pillow and settles down behind a column. At the bus stop in front of the church, the pregnant lady I served chocolate with marshmallows and roasted almonds to sits and laughs with her mother, unaware that someone behind her won't be listening to the sounds of the rain on his roof, safe from the wet, as she will be as soon as the bus pulls around to take her home.

My heart still beating entirely too fast for the simple approach of a storm, I almost fly across a darkened quad, mistaking the lights of cars going down Cameron for fireflies and wishing that there really were lightning bugs to distract my attention from their namesake. The quad is quiet- for all I know, it could just be me, the quad and the storm stealing minutes from eternity. Keys out, I unlock my bike, take off the rain cover and actually hop on, pedaling like crazy to outrun the downpour, to escape the clouds, to hide in safety from the still-distant lightning. I speed by Hill Hall and perhaps on another night I would be struck by its proud stance in the face of such a storm, but not tonight. My mind is racing as fast as my bike, jumping from seventeen to nineteen to twenty and the things I would take back and the things I would keep and everything that I would have done. I'm coasting down the small hill across the street from Phillips and Peabody before my mind takes up the idea that my fear, my urgency, my race is quite ridiculous. The thunder, right on cue, claps again, and I wake up and pedal faster.

Across Columbia, flitting by frat houses and my bike begins to feel like my noble steed, carrying me far from the troubles that chase me. Victorious, I come down a hill and turn on to Pittsboro, pedaling like a child who rides his bike fast just because he can or who stands at the top of a hill on her rollerblades, taking a breath just before she starts down, flying into the grassy bank at the bottom, speeding up on the way down just to say she did. It's the only kind of speed I indulge in these days, the kind that says that I can but choose not to, the kind that lets you feel empowered because you and nobody but you taught that bike how to fly or those shoes how to soar. I run to feel the power in my legs, not because I need to. Needed to.

Lightning flashes in front of me as I swing into the driveway by Wesley but no matter- I'm back now, I'm safe. I wonder why I don't just sit down on the picnic tables, wait for the storm to come before heading inside. I lock up my bike and suddenly the urgency's back. I fumble with my keys before opening the door in a hurry and almost run up the stairs once I'm inside. I could sit in the sanctuary and listen to the storm before darkness takes over the world, but I don't. I'm safe, inside, doing household chores for a quarter of an hour before my heart slows down and I stop listening for the rain. I don't understand my panic, the need to run away from the storm instead of just dancing in it. Storms scare us all, as kids, even if it was only the first time we heard the thunder and didn't know what it was, but I've long since learned that there are much more terrible things in the world than summer thunderstorms. Why should I want to hide from one?

I'm not courageous. Sometimes I think I'm the most cowardly person I know. But then again, I always doubted whether the Cowardly Lion was just faking when I was little. I mean, sure, the Tinman couldn't help that he didn't have a heart, poor dear, and the Scarecrow didn't have much choice, with straw for brains, bless his soul. But the Cowardly Lion never made sense to me. Where does courage come from anyway?

Storms mean change. The world is never quite the same after its been rained on. Every good story needs a storm. Maybe that's why I love standing in front of one so much- it's like reading a book when you know what the end must come out to be, but you have no idea how it will get there. Before a storm, you know that things are going to be wet, that there will be puddles to jump in, but you have no clue how the clouds are going to achieve this. Will there be torrential downpours for a few minutes or light drizzle with a good solid rain near the end? Will the wind pick up and sling the drops invasively into people or will it lie low once the rain has started, letting it drop gently onto the waiting earth? Before a storm, existence is uncertain expectation with an end in mind. I think that I would love to live life that way.

Sometimes I think the thunderclouds know the great questions in my life. Maybe I stand in front of them because I want to listen. Maybe I ran because I've heard them talking and I'm not ready to do what they say. You know, when you hear, there's no excuse not to do.

Are you going to leave Me? No? Then do you love Me? More than you know?

Then follow Me.

Where? Does it matter? You're with Me. I'm not going to let you get lost. I love you. How will we get there? You'll see. Do you trust Me?

Then come.