Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Today, a little boy at the high school killed himself. Suicide will always mess with my head and my heart. How do you explain to the little girl that broke up with him that it's not her fault? How do you help his parents see that they did they best they could? How can you blame this boy?

You can't. all you can do is be there. Be there with his family and friends. Be here before the Lord. Anne Lamott described it as building a barn:  "We, their friends, all know the rains and the wind will come, and they will be cold–oh, God, will they be cold. But then we will come too, I said; we will have been building this barn all along, and so there will always be shelter."

We all need shelter. We all need to be shelter. 

My boots are so heavy today. 

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Sometimes, I make myself sick.
When I read of revolutionaries and think of how I spent my day, I am achieving nothing. I have made no great sacrifice for humanity, I do not scream out for justice on the streets, I want to...every bone in this body wants to run and do something that changes something around me...but at the end of the day, I'm too tired and have too much homework.

May of 2011...sometimes you are just too far away.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

There is life inside these bones.
I just need to find it
revive it
set it on fire, so I burn, so it's real.
I just need to become, and stay.
awake

Friday, August 21, 2009

I think I take life too seriously.

Scratch that.

I know I do.

This is going to change.

Starting....



Now.

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Different Spell, Old Magic

Impressive

sense of place
struggling where the past seems a lot better than the present or future

thoughtful on departure
driven by an unattainable dream of happiness

Something

despite longing, exiled

dreaming of a finer future

dismissed into two categories: can't or wouldn't have

open
ashes. scatter them
a former life has gone
unraveled
but remains haunted by them and bitter failures

return for another

In life, characters you care about,
despite or because of their flaws
sympathetic
likeable

on the surface, hilarious

questions, complications
we build for ourselves.

Monday, August 3, 2009

I am back in Arkansas. I don't really know what to say about this fact. I am with my family, so I am "home", but I am not home. There's so much in my head. So much in my heart. I'm not who I was, and I'm not quite sure who I'll be.

But I know which path I want to go on, and I think that one day, your path will meet mine again.

I'm afraid that I'll lose sight of the path in the midst of the day-to-day, but I trust I will be reminded of the journey I'm on.

I just don't want to lose the pieces of myself I caught this summer.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

How can a heart be broken and full at the same time?
How is it that, just when you think you can't feel or think anymore, something else begins to consume space you didn't think you had.

I wish I would just know. I wish you would too.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Today I went for a run by the river. There was an old couple who was just sitting there on a bench...watching the water slowly pass by them. They were still there when I came back that way, still sitting, enjoying their surroundings and each other.

When I am old, I want to have lived a life so full that I have nothing better to do than sit by the river with the man who I have lived that life with, reminiscing about our adventures and looking forward to the next ones.

Friday, June 12, 2009

There's an old man who sits an smokes on the corner outside of my apartment building. Every morning and every afternoon, we great each other in Czech and go about each other's days. I have a neighbor...but I have only caught a glimpse of his back as he walked into his apartment while I was coming up the stairs. He is older. He paints. Every once in a while there is a new panting on our landing. I think that he and the person two floors down smoke weed. I smell it on my way out in the mornings. Everyone in my building is a complete mystery to me, and I one to them.

I love this.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

I am here. In my apartment in the Krc section of Prague...just a bit outside of old town. It is so beautiful and peaceful, I might already be in love with it.
It's interesting to me how free and light I feel, as each plane rose with take-off, so did the weight I was feeling. Nothing describable...just a deep deep peace.
I also think I'm in love with subways...they are much more interesting than buses or trams.

Saturday, May 30, 2009

I have spent this weekend training with Avant in Kansas City, Mo.; and tomorrow I fly out to finally get to Prague. I don't really know much about what I am doing, but I know that I am supposed to be there. I truly anticipate this being one of the hardest, most challenging experiences of my life, but it will be hard in a truly beautiful way.

I'll be keeping this updated more when I am actually there.

Friday, May 22, 2009

In a week, I am leaving to spend my summer in Prague. I will be working with Avant ministries helping them with video communications stuff.
Europe is where I want to be after college, and I can't believe I get to have a little taste of that.
If I'm going to be honest with myself, I must admit I'm a bit scared...I am going to be the only one who is not married with children...it will be the first time I have been away from some of my best friends for so long...with things that are going on in my life right now, I feel like I'm leaving right in the middle of unfinished things...
but all of this is to say that I'm ready. I will be alone in another country, I intend to use this as a good time of self-reflection and a time to be away from the distractions so I can get some answers.
I am scared and alone, but ready and at peace. And I know that this will be a beautiful adventure.

Thursday, April 30, 2009

I'm growing older, at peace where I'm at.
I wish you could be here for that.

Friday, April 17, 2009

Oh how the mind jumps in the early hours...

It is 3 in the morning, I can't sleep.
I just got off the phone with my beautiful friend Daniel. We understand each other even though it seems like we shouldn't get the other one at all, I think that's why we are so good for each other.

I wonder what it is that made you give up on me?

Life is still good, don't think I am unstable...I am just a human who doesn't quite understand things.

I am missing some old friends more than ever right now, and I wonder what they are doing.
Life is beautiful, and this is a beautiful time for me. I am learning to exist fully on my own I suppose.

I want to create something...something big and meaningful...even if it only means something to me.

I intent to spend the month of May in fields and trees and homes of loved ones, seeing and creating and loving everything around me before I leave the country for the rest of the summer. I am going to Prague, a place I have never been, without anyone I know...and that excites me more than I can say.

You are beautiful

Sunday, April 5, 2009

I have four weeks until the end of the school year.
I have eight weeks until I embark on a fantastic adventure.
I can do this.

Life is good...life is so good.

Friday, March 27, 2009

I am free.
Free to love.
Free to be brave.
Free to speak how I feel.
Free to not speak at all.
Free to come and go as I please.


I am free.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Neverland

"To live would be an awfully big adventure."
Peter Pan, you silly boy, this isn't done in Neverland. Life an adventure when you're allowed to grow up.
It's an adventurous thought that, from here on out, every decision I make--not just about what I do, but about who I am and who I am going to be--will impact the existence I will have as a "grown up". This existence will be one of my own creating, no other human authority will dictate so much of what my life will be like.
I have so many options in front of me. Will it be Spain, Germany, Africa, or Siloam for the summer? Will you be a part of my life? Will I be a part of yours? What great strangers are going to come in and out of my life?

Life is an awfully big adventure, scary, but grand nonetheless.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

"...Am I really what others say about me? Or am I only what I know of myself?
Restless, yearning and sick, like a bird in its cage,
Struggling for the breath of life, as though someone were choking my throat
Hungering for colors, for flowers, for the songs of birds,
Thirsting for kind words and human closeness,
Shaking with anger at capricious tyranny and the pettiest slurs,
Bedeviled by anxiety, awaiting great events that might never occur, fearfully powerless and worried for friends far away.
Weary and empty in prayer, in thinking, in doing.
Weak, and ready to take leave of it all.

Who am I? This man or that other? Am I then this man today and tomorrow another? Am I both all at once?
An imposter to others, but to me little more than a whining, despicable weakling?
Does what is in me compare to a vanquished army, that flees in disorder before a battle already won?

Who am I?
They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.

Whoever I am, you know me, O God. You know I am yours."

~Dietrich Bonhoeffer.


I don't know who I am. But that bird in its cage seems pretty familiar.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Sometimes loving people means saying nothing to them at all.

Friday, January 2, 2009

2009 has the potential to be a good year, simply because every day in it has potential to be a good day. I don't make resolutions every year, because I don't think that time can be separated so distinctly. I have goals, but they are life goals, I don't want to limit myself to only improving or doing so many things in 12 months, or to say that I must accomplish something in 12 or I am a failure. Some things take a long longer than 12 months to do. If we stopped worrying about making a resolution to loose 10 pounds in 12 months, and just started focusing on living like a better person today--seizing every moment and learning every lesson we can--we could do a lot more good for this world.

I am not saying that I know a lot about doing a lot of good for the world, I don't do much good for it, actually. I just wanted to clear that up.

I just want to focus on being a better human this day, and I'll take the next when it comes.