I/don't get/many things right the first time...
in fact/I am told/that a lot

Now I know all the wrong turns/
the stumbles and falls/
brought me here...

And/where was I/before the day/
that I first saw your lovely face?
Now I see it every day, and I know.

That I am...I am...I am the luckiest...

Next door/there's an old man/who lived to his nineties and
one day/passed away/in his sleep.
and his wife/she stayed for a couple of days/And passed away.

I'm sorry, I know that's a/strange way to tell you that I know/
we belong.
That I know...

That I am...I am...the luckiest.

--Ben Folds

a little something to keep me motivated
and
a little something to inspire whatever final papers you're mired in at the moment.
and
a little something I found rather profound and inspiring.

Today's moment of finals despair.

and....maybe it's a good thing that finals aren't some monster of fearsome aspect who one must confront in mortal combat, the result of which can only be the death of one or both...
maybe it's a good thing that life will go on after this week whether I conquer or am banished in disgraceful death from the battlefield...
but right now it just seems to rob the whole thing of drama and excitement. Besides, I think I could take Dr. Oakerson hand to hand...even if the tricky bugger has a mysteriously broken nose.
:)

where i want to be

what I want to be on


a few days' worth of food, a swimsuit, a good book, and a twisty road...work odd jobs for gas money and meals and wash in the ocean. i don't want to be here and i don't want to be home and i don't want to be anywhere that tastes like frustration and emptiness. let me go somewhere miles away from yesterday.

"Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker."
---C.S. Lewis, On Three Ways of Writing for Children

stolen so adroitly from jason's profile...thanks buddy!

why i am no longer a writing major

In The 13th Warrior, Antonia Banderas plays an Arabic diplomat who has fallen in with twelve Nordic warriors. They are thirteen, sworn to defend a small village, and an entire tribe of several hundred mounted, torch and spear-bearing men is charging their way. The proud Norse warriors, drenched in the falling rain, are preparing themselves for one last battle. Despite all their efforts, they have failed to strike at the heart of their enemy, and now their back are to a wall: they have no tricks left, and they will probably die.
The Nordic warriors stands stoically in the pouring rain; the makeshift defenses are as ready as they will ever me. They have sharpened their swords, tightened their belts and boots and bracers, and stripped themselves of every comfort and defense against the weather. They are ready for batter, and as they stand a watch their enemy approach, they join in the determined cadence of an ancestral battle hymn:
"Lo, I see my father.
Lo I see my mother, and my sisters, and my brothers.
Lo, do I see the line of my people, stretching back to the beginning.
They call to me; they bid me to take my place among them,
in Valhalla, where the brave may live...forever."
Their voices rise against the thunder of the approaching hoofbeats, crescendoing in the final silent pause, and the defiant shout of "FOREVER!"

This must be something like what the writer of Hebrews had in mind in reminding us of the legacy of pilgrims who have gone before us. "Seeing now that we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us throw off every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us and run with perseverance the race set before us." Let us earn the right to say with Paul and all those who went before us, "I have fought the good fight, I have run the race, I have kept the faith."

John 10:14-18
"I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me--just as the Father knows me and I know the Father--and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life--only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father."

"...the reason that the Father loves me is that I lay down my life..." this is a bit of a stumbling block for me; i'm used to the "Jesus loves me for me," "I don't have to do anything and can't do anything to make God love me more" sort of doctrine...this is a little troubling...exegesis, anyone?

Both Moeller and I have blogs. We are the only guys I know who have blogs. Moeller wears button downs and khakis, plays the guitar when he is thoughtful, and expresses his emotions. I write poetry and obsess about the perfect colors for my blog and making sure my spelling is impeccable. Does this make us metrosexual? Even though I am very scraggley and refuse to where anything but blue jeans and battered courds?

home...
it's christmastime, and everyone is talking about it: a place where you can eat awesome food, where intimacy and unselfconsciousness are natural, where friends and family unashamedly build their lives around each other because each one is important. where you could live heart and soul full-bore.

it's beautiful, and some have more memories of it and some have less, but either way it is transitory. it ages and changes and matures and declines and time, change, and distance take it away, leaving the emptiness of mortality and the restlessness of longing.

there it is, deep within, with the brisk chill and stillness of a rainy fall day in the mountains. frosty air plumes from our nostrils and mouths and we walk with purpose and memory. because it isn't a longing that pulls us backwards; it is a hope that calls us onward. the emptiness never was really full, but it was meant to be. faith tells us it will be.

so, like Abraham and Noah and Job we admit that we are strangers, wanderers here, looking for a city not built by human hands, and mothers and sisters and brothers and a Father not of human birth and earthbound fellowship, but of heavenly adoption and purposeful fellowship. and maybe we will not see it with our eyes, but we will not stop looking while we have them.

home...it is so far away.

"If I sing let me sing for the joy/that has bourn in me these songs/
and if I weep, let it be as a man/who is longing for his home."
-Rich Mullins

"When an important chief died, his contentment in the netherworld was ensured by slaughtering a retinue of servants, wives, and advisors. They were supposed to keep the chief company...for nearly all the Ashanti, ritual murder is now as repulsive a notion as witch burning is for the citizens of Massachusetts."

Blaine Harden, Dispatches From a Fragile Continent

one minute you're laughing at them, the silly people, the next minute you're laughing even harder at yourself. silly people abound...I love my major

"Four things canot be hidden--love, smoke, a pillar of fire, and a man striding across the open bled."
-Fremen Wisdom

how's that for an obscure literary reference? thanks uncle chuck!

Home. Beautiful. So glad to see you all, even when circumstances are troubling and God is doing more clearing and plouging than sowing and tending. Love you all.