Is

There is nothing in the world like holding a small, small child in your arms and feeling him fall asleep, his quick tiny breaths slowing the least bit, feeling the rapid heartbeat close to your own, thinking of his short baby life and the life that stretches ahead of him.

And there is little in the world like having a child tuck her arm through your elbow during the car ride home, resting her head on your arm to drift briefly away before waking to stumble to her bed, her honeyblonde head full of half-formed dreams.

It is hard to describe. I don't know if i can really say what I want to here. But there's something about the way children trust when they're tired. There's something about being big enough, strong enough, for them to lean on and drift away against.
I will not fall apart when a ten-day old little boy is placed in my arms.
I won't crack if a ten-year old girl lays her head on my shoulder.

I need to take a note from them.

God will not tip over if a twenty-year-old me leans on Him.
Moreover, He will not change if the whole world leaned on Him; conversely, He would be moved not one whit if the whole world rejected Him.
He does not change. He is God. The word is a foreign one, implying a power alien, unknown. And I do not understand all it connotes. But in his very "other"ness I derive at once awe and comfort.
So tonight I sleep, knowing that He is, and only that. It is enough.

Verse Two

Inspired by Timothy O.

Christmas season on college campuses is always a little off, since we have break and most of us go far away, back to our homes, and thus do not spend Christmas together. It's kinda great: you get to celebrate Christmas with your friends first, to get you ready for the onslaught of Christmas-yness waiting for me back home. So Friday night I went to Christmas party with a bunch of buddies hosted by my R.A., who lives in town. I got there late, and was just getting out of the car when the throng of sweatered celebrators poured out of the house, announcing their plans to carol.
I love many things, not unlike Rupert Brooke, and among the things I love are Christmas carols. This love I attribute largely to my parents and to my family's annual Christmas parties. At my church we sang the verses. All the verses. I do not come from the three-song-worship-set background, I come from the sing-til-you're-done church. That plus the annual Christmas festivities, which find my immediate and extended family members packed into some great-aunt's living room, singing for hours on end. We like it.
That and I have a memory that retains lyrics like socks retain smells.

There are certain hymns to which everyone knows the words. "Amazing Grace," "How Great Thou Art," "All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name." But who knows the other verses? We do know they all have more than one, right? The same thing happens to Christmas carols. "O Holy Night," "Hark! the Herald Angels Sing," "Silent Night"-- they all have more to them than the chorus. And no one knows the verses anymore. It makes me sad. It also means that whenever we go caroling (see the first paragraph) I am always the awkwardly loud one who tries to go for the second verse of "O Come All Ye Faithful," with the end result being me singing with exaggerated enunciation while my fellow carolers hum in the background. With everyone coming in a beat late on the "O come"s.

The same thing happens in church, when they start playing hymns, which have lasted for hundreds of years in some cases (which will, please God, NOT be the case for "History Maker" or "Break Free") and either use the chorus to segue into another song, or simply go back and sing the first verse again. Okay fine. The first verse is great. It's beautiful. But--brace yourself-- let's look at the other verses.
Gasp!
Are hymns not trendy enough anymore? Maybe because they weren't written by long-haired dudes in girl jeans and fitted t-shirts today's Christian won't be able to follow.
Well heck, some of these hymns were written when guys wore WIGS. And fitted breeches. So fashion should not be a barrier. In fact, let's bring those wigs back! Let's issue a call for the new worship trend to be a throwback to the way they used to worship-- 17th century style. Isaac Watts-- he's so hot right now!
!!!!!
What I really fell is going on here is deeper than people not knowing verses to carols. We only sing them for, generously, a month out of the year, so maybe it's unfair to expect people to remember them. (Even though we sing the same songs every year in that one month...)
I think what really irks me about this is the dumbing down of the church. Why do worship leaders assume that Christians do not have the attention span to be able to appreciate more than one verse? Do they think that the theology is too hard, too advanced for us pew-warmers? Is it just too much to ask a Christian to memorize a few more words? I mean, they're already taxing us with lyrics like "take take take it all" and "won't you break free won't you break free", so I assume it would be way too much of a burden for us to have to LISTEN (instead of breaking free) to words like these:

My sin-- oh the bliss of this glorious thought--
My sin-- not in part, but the whole--
Is nailed to the Cross, and I bear it no more
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, oh my soul!
--It Is Well With My Soul

Maybe the problem is the obscure language. Definitely couldn't ask 21st century people to try to understand-- oh wait. All of the words to the verse just given are completely and totally understandable. Unless you're illiterate.
As for tough theology, yes. The concept of Christ bearing our sins on the cross is maybe too obscure for us to handle. We'd rather hear "All day / All Daaaayayayay." Not only is that cooler, it's a lot more relevant too. It just has more bearing on our lives as Christians. Plus we can hop while we sing it. Which obviously literally brings us closer to God.

This post is wandering a lot. The point is, people, the men and women who wrote these hymns wrote more than just the first verse for a reason. the words to these songs are some of the most powerful declarations of faith that have ever been penned, and now we relegate them to obscurity because they have no electric guitar riffs. Please, look at the verses. Maybe sing one. Or two. I'm cautious about pushing as far as three, but if you go there, you may as well take it all the way to four, right? These words will make you think. Thinking is good.

I'll close this with my inspiration for the post-- the words to one of those carols no one could follow the other night. We already know the tunes to all of these songs-- these words go right along with it. So handy.

Hail, the Heav'n-born Prince of Peace!
Hail, the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and Life to all He brings
Risen with healing in His wings!
Mild, he lays His glory by,
Born that man no more may die,
Born to raise the sons of Earth,
Born to give them second birth,
Hark! the herald angels sing:
"Glory to the newborn King!"

Chronic

I'm pulling an all-nighter--this will be my third full one in a week. But I do not want to write about how my choice to double major in History and English has left me with too many papers and not enough of either inclination, impetus, or time. I am writing now, partially to avoid the homework that is currently glaring at me from another window on my screen, but also because I haven't written in a very long time. And I think I need to.

I have been wrestling with the concept of Truth.
Probably everyone faces this battle at some point during their lives. For me the question came to a head over Thanksgiving break. I am still looking for the conclusion, but the looking has been turned aside to some extent by the haze of paper-writing and involvedness that comes with being a student at the tail end of a semester.

These words below were my thoughts over break. Now, a week or two later, I have had time to simmer and to reflect, and yet these words are still ringing in my head. Perhaps soon something will change.
Please excuse how messy this is. This was just me and my laptop at around 2 am, trying to wrestle it out, so if there are parts that do not follow or make sense, those were at the time filled in by my thought process, parts which didn't make it out in time before my mind rushed on to something else.

--------

God, if there is You and You are what You say, then there should be ONE way, ONE truth, ONE set of things and rules and standards, and they should be clear and we should all know them and be able to follow.

Why then is it not like this? Which truth is Truth? Whose truth is Truth? To know Truth I must seek it for myself. “For myself”? No, I do not believe this. If Truth is “for myself” then it is not Truth, for it would depend on me. But if You are who You say then Truth is not dependent, never dependent, on me or on anyone; it must be free and untied, Independent of every human being.

What is it?

Why is it so hard to find? Because every one goes his own way, every one finds truth “for himself”, and every truth is not the same. This is not as it should be.

Where then do I begin?

I begin with You, they say. But is that not what they all have done before? Do they not all see different truths? So this way is simply telling me to do what everyone else seems to have done, to find and make my own way and shout loudly that at last I have got a handle on it, that I know what is truly true, that every other before me was wrong, or was only partially right, simply because I know, because I found truth “for myself”.

This is not Truth. This is a farce. Truth must be outside of us. How to find it? Has someone already? Has anyone ever? How is it that so many different versions of the truth exist? It should not be.

When a ladybug comes the end of my finger, she does not turn back or try to go around. She flies straight at the light. I do not understand this.

This may be a lack of faith. I don’t know whether it is or not. But I can say it will not be reasoned or cried away in a night. This is like a broken limb, that needs to set and be uncomfortable.

You are the Way and the Truth and the Light. No man cometh unto the Father but by You. This I believe.

What does it mean to come by You? To follow your teachings? They were simple.
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength, and your neighbor as yourself."
"Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness."
"Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you."

You said to judge not, lest we be judged; you said to do unto others as we would have others do to us; you said liars and adulterers will not enter the Kingdom.
You said any number of things that no one will listen to.

The chorus of truths has become a cacophony in the mouths of those who say they are yours. The babble rises and falls in my ears, and I cannot block them out.

I want to know Truth. I do not see how I can.

This is truth: I know something of It. I believe that Truth, whole and entire, unfragmented and independent, is. I do not know where it is to be found in its whole state. I have looked and I have not found it. Men have cluttered You so. I am too simple and undiscerning to know where You leave off and they begin, to know what of You is You and what of You is not. I cannot tell anymore, and I do not trust myself to hear from You. How can I, when that is what they have all done, and You begrimed and confused as a result?

Where to turn?

No Telling

I like Wednesdays.

every so often I get
knocked outside of my head
and I am always surprised by the view.

once in a while
reality presents itself irresistibly to my unwilling eyes
and when it does the laughter comes un-canned
shaking me out of my sitcom mentality

because sometimes
I'm watching life from outside of it.

I freeze in one spot and don't notice
til I try to move and panic because
even my eyes are stuck.
and nobody can tell me that's a good thing.

call it sleep deprivation or yesterday's mascara
but that eyes-frozen feeling
makes me rub and rub til the tears start.
it's ok 'cause tears are lubricants.
they promote motion.

you could try
eleven different ways to tell me
upside down and backwards
that I have nothing to worry about.
I wouldn't believe you.

outside of life isn't so bad
except it's not real.
which means it isn't so good.

Snippets

Junior year is going to be short. It has been short. It will continue to have been being short. I noticed as life goes on it is ever-increasingly diminutive.
I need to get a job, but I have no time for that.
My likes and dislikes have changed radically over the past two years. A lot of things have changed over the past two years.

National Novel Writer's Month is a scant week and a half away. I'll be trying my hand at the 50,000 words-in-thirty-days challenge...and I'll probably not get any homework done.

Someone gave me an umbrella today, which made up for the iron quitting on me halfway through my skirt. I released my scarves from their trunk-seclusion. I helped my roommate assemble a bookshelf and listened to her struggles in figuring out her new Amazing Coffeemaker.
I don't drink coffee. But my room will be a popular place, probably.

According to my degree plan sheets, I ought to be able to finish my double major in four years.
I watched Hamlet for the first time today (the one with Mel Gibson, Zeffirelli's production) and thought I could identify with him, to a very small extent.

The Ancient Mayans thought people with crosseyes were beautiful. They dangled pendants off of their infants' foreheads to force the trait. That's so weird-- and now we vacuum fat out of our arses and shoot it into our foreheads.
I think some of the Mayans shook their heads and said, "hey, guys, this is actually a ridiculous standard of beauty." If they did then maybe there's hope for us too.

grownups

My best friend just got engaged. I’m wondering when I became old enough for that to happen.

It’s a milestone in one’s life, I think; that first friend to go. And it was she; the last one we ever thought would be the first one. I’ve watched them fall in love for the past six months and it’s been so amazing, in an odd, living-vicariously-through-someone-else kind of way. And tonight was the night—we crowded outside the elevators, waiting for her to get back to her dorm room, and screamed so that the shafts echoed as soon as the metal doors slid apart and we saw the smile on her face and the glint on her hand. Her face was bursting—she wanted to smile so much more than was physically possible—and she couldn’t stop grabbing us in those fierce best-friend hugs that make your throat choke and your eyes mist “but I’m not crying,” I sniff, “It’s just been raining on my face.” (God bless you flight of the conchords) And then to pile into her room and talk to Ja—her fiancé—and congratulate him…I’d never done that before tonight. Even though we all knew it was coming.

Anyway, yes. The bridesmaid dresses will be pool blue ruched empire waisted halter satin ball gowns. Enough adjectives to choke a cow, but they’re so pretty, and it’s a flattering cut. We’re still looking for hers. Like I said, we knew this was coming.

I don’t know what to do with myself. I know it’s silly, but the fact that I’ll be a bridesmaid twice this May, and the proliferation of relationships around me makes me wonder—did I miss something? What is it about this year, this summer, this semester, that has given all my friends this pair-off fever? More than that, where are they coming from? Relationships are cropping up out of nowhere; Cupid has traded in his bow and arrow for a sniper rifle.

And I'd kinda like to get shot... (? pardon the awkward conclusion to that metaphor...)

If anyone deserves it, it’s these two—and I am so happy for them I can’t express it. And for them all, for I perceive looming ahead of me a great many more pool blue ruched empire waisted halter satin ball gowns, or the rough equivalent. Life is happening, those Big Moments, and I don’t remember getting the memo that these things were on their way. They pretty much just showed up and made themselves at home. Which is fine, but it does leave me a bit breathless.

This has lost its point. But somehow I am okay with that.

Reality is a funny thing.
It's fluid, flexible, changes when you look at it from a different perspective. Currently I feel caught between a handful of different ones. None of these are easily or neatly classified; I can't pigeonhole them into "academic life", "social life", "spiritual life", and I feel split between them.
I could look at life in context of the scandal that is rocking my university right now, and live depressed. I could look at it in context of the relational confusions of friends, family, colleagues and be bewildered. I could see things as my father wants me to see them, and be unsure. I could see things the way everyone else sees them, and be soulless.
Or I could see things the way God sees them, and be at peace.
That is something that, if I ever had it, I have lost.
There is a time for talk and there is a time for silence, a time to inquire and a time to be still and wait for understanding.
There is a time to make jokes and there is a time for sobriety. Levity is not listed among the virtues, culture has paid it more than its due. There is a time to be small and a time to grow, and I cannot help but feel that I am overdue for growth.
Please do not read me wrong: this is no criticism of personal immaturity, dissatisfaction with self, et cetera. This is an acknowledgment of how things are, a nod to the reality that does not change, no matter where I stand. I have seen that there are some things I cannot get around, and it is time I stopped trying.
I only know to do what is given me to do.

Waking Up Early is Good For Me

It's fall again. Didn't we just do this?
On the one hand there is the sameness of seasons, fall coming at the same time it does every year; on the other hand, there has never been this fall before, so I cannot tell if it is just redundancy or an old tale re-told. What I know of fall makes me lean towards the latter.

This morning I emerged from my dorm and headed to the gym, expecting the sticky, cloying humidity that has greeted me for the past few weeks. To my delight, I was greeted rather by a cool stillness, the first herald of winter. Light pollution reflected off the low-hung clouds, making it hard to see dawn (the days are shorter. Perhaps that should be the first herald of winter). I thought about running on the track, but decided against it. I didn't want to ruin my perception of a good morning by working out in it. I went inside.
Coming out forty-five minutes later I saw no trace of the overcast dark that had accompanied me there. In the five minutes back to the dorm the sun rose in a clear sky and waved a distant hello to the baseball stadium. The athletes and dance team were piling in for their morning training (I can't say I'm sorry I missed them. There's nothing like tiny girls and massive guys working out next to you, casting surreptitious glances at your heart rate or distance or rate of calorie-burninating, to make life really worthwhile) and a few cars were snoring into the parking lot.
I enjoyed the walk back to my dorm more than usual, because I spent half of the time feeling self-righteous for having worked out and the other half exulting in the approaching Time of Sweaters.

We shall see if this coolness lasts, if the temperatures keep inching down. It could be a trick.

Four-Letter Words

I had about three unnecessary paragraphs here. I cut them all and am subsequently proud of myself.
Yesterday, was the annual ORU Worship chapel, where the Worship department (note: those words juxtaposed look a bit off to me...) takes over the service, talks about auditions, tours, etc. Souls a'Fire had the last twenty minutes or so, and I led a hymn at the end of our set. The other two songs we did were energetic praise songs, so my song was pretty much it for worship. I sang "All Hail the Power if Jesus' Name" without making the dreaded mistake on the line "let angels prostrate fall," I was on pitch, and most importantly, the Lord anointed it.
My 2.30 class on Mondays and Wednesdays is Honors Shakespeare with Dr. E. The English department is home to some of the more eccentric ORU professors. Dr. E is the chair. (The chair of the department. He's not actually a chair.)
As I stood outside the class I felt pretty good. The day was going well. Dr. E came downstairs and approached me as we waited for the 1.20 class to vacate the room.
"Were you singing with Souls a'Fire?" quoth he. What he actually said sounded more like "Soulish Choir," but I let it go.
I nodded. "Yes," I said, so as to affirm the nod.
Dr. E's face scrunched. I am sorry, but there is no other word for it. It scrunched, and after a brief pause he looked at me and said in a meditative tone, "Y'know, they used to be really good-- used to play good music."
I followed him into the room, after hoisting my jaw off the floor and slinging it over my shoulder. Sundry classmates shot me amused and puzzled glances.
In class we wandered to one of Dr. E's favorite topics-- that of cultivating a Christian aesthetic. On the way he dropped the gem that the chapel music had been nothing more than "cacophony."
Here are all the four letter words that I took away from the class in my head:
Used
To Be (two words, four letters. Gimme a break.)
Good

also:
Mean
Rude
WHAT????

I can understand that gospel is not the most appreciated genre among the older professors. I get that. But really.


THEN (it gets better) I went to a meeting for my department. I sat between two friends in the fourth row and related my tale of woe. Enter Mrs. G, one of my history professors, who has always liked me, mostly because I like getting sidetracked in class as much as she.
"I saw you up there today," said Mrs. G. "You looked really good."
Then, over the rows of people, "I hated the music, I really hated it, but you looked good."
And my nerdtopia, so carefully structured around the approval of all, and most of all professors, came splintering to pieces.
Granted these were the only two detractors in a crowd of very supportive friends. But they're my teachers. My teachers! Somehow I thought they would be supportive.
More four-letter words:
Hate
WHAT???

Do not misread, friends. I am not destroyed by this. It's kinda funny in a sense. It took me three hours to think of the word I wanted for Dr. E ("rude") and I had no idea how to react to Mrs. G.

Now I am sleepy, but I thought this was a blog-worthy experience.

Streak

Blog, you and I
Are alone on this superhighway.

Solution

I get morbid when I'm Really Tired.
I noticed this habit of mine some time ago, generally when I'd think about the conversations from the night before and realize they'd devolved into a sink of introspection and analyzation.
(Note: if you think you're being too introspective, you're probably right.)
So I picked up on this tendency of mine.
A long time ago.
And realizing it never did me much good, since all I did with the realization was to warn my Good Friends During those Really Tired Times: "Hey guys, I'm not really myself when I'm this tired..."
Except guess what. The other night no one was around to say that to.
So I went to sleep early.
And y'know, I'm brilliant. Sleep works wonders.

Discovered in an Old Notebook

My little roots have been pulled up
I cry a dewdrop on the lawn
The sun comes up and fiercely burns
I and my dewdrop tears are gone.

No Better Place

I want to say something and I'm not sure what it is. When this happens I write until it comes out; it's worked before, so I'll give it a shot here.

Whether home at school or home at home, one thing is becoming clearer and clearer as I get older:
I am not Home yet, not of this world, not meant to stay here.
There is a part of my heart that hurts when I think about it, but it is a hurt that I cannot and must not assuage.
I want to live my life so that I can look back from Home and say, "That was a good ride."

There's a lot that I want with this Life. It's a precious, sacred thing, and I try hard to appreciate it. Life comes from God, the natural result of the immensity of Love that He is. Such a Love cannot but cause new life to spring into being, for Love is of all other things creative. I want to fall in love, get married, have kids, go, do, be, work, walk, run, think, fly.
But I do not wish to forget why I am here.
I am here to do as He commands.
I am here to take the Love that created me, that created all of us, and hold it out with both hands to a world that has already rejected it.
It sounds...futile. It sounds like it will be painful. But I am finding that things that are worthwhile tend to bring pain with them, at least for a time. The flesh tends to cringe at the thought of the natural consequences that come with Being His. I think though that I am done listening to the flesh.

This is an excerpt from my journal, back in March:
"Let me be an invisible conduit, an unseen vessel for You....Let my name be coupled with Yours; let the two be inseparable. Let me be immersed, utterly submerged, in You....May the only impression I leave be one of You: make me invisible...
If I am extinguished, so be it. They do not notice the wick, only the flame."

I can't wait to get Home. Come with me. There's room.

I Don't Care if This is a Stupid Reason

Everytime I hit a dry spot, everytime I start to wonder if I can keep going, He goes and does something that from this vantage point looks nothing short of spectacular.

Like this.

There's this little boy I've been praying for. A friend's nephew. Born eight weeks premature with a defective heart. Put, as a last resort, on a machine that pumps the blood throughout the body so that the weak heart chambers need not try to maintain blood pressure. A machine that at the most is supposed to keep its patient alive for two weeks.
This little boy was on it for four weeks.
It got so that I dreaded hearing from my friend. It's not a reaction I'm proud of, but it's one I'm prone to, as a human who struggles at times with what I see as compared to what I know. I kept praying. At times it was the formulaic prayer of one who prays from a sense of duty, the kind of prayer that you have to choke past the boulder in your throat because part of you is screaming accusations at the other part of you (accusations that you do your best to ignore but which sound and awful lot like "hypocrite", "doubter", and "faithless"). And then there were the prayers that were borne of a quiet, desperate trust in the Creator of that tiny, weak heart. Sometimes I couldn't tell the difference.
I dreaded hearing from him. There was a battle raging internally. I knew he was past some point of recovery. I knew he had been on the machine for too long. I knew it.
I knew God could heal him. I knew I believed for a reason. I knew that whatever happened, God would still be sovereign. I knew it. So some days I prayed. Somedays, I tried very hard not to think about it.
The other day I got this call from my friend.
The baby got a heart.
After hanging onto life for far longer than he should have been able to, he got a heart.
I wish I could tell you that I knew it would happen. But only part of me did. It is a sweet, sweet victory. The child will live, and grow, and thrive. I know because I am still praying for him. That baby does not and most likely never will know who I am; that's okay.

I think what I'm trying to say is, I think maybe God saved that little one in part for my sake. Seen in black and white that looks awful, cold, and selfish. The baby is alive because God has some plan for his life that I do not and cannot know. But maybe--
Maybe God answers our prayers to give us something of His to hold onto.

And that's what I was thinking about. And it makes me trust Him more.
(Refer to the title of this post.)

In Pursuit of Pursuing

Tonight I watched a movie that I really really like for the second time.
I enjoy being the only person in a group of people to have seen a good movie, mostly because if I am the only person to have seen it, no one around me can butt in with those horribly obnoxious kind-of-spoilers, where they giggle in just the place they shouldn't if anyone else is to enjoy the film, or comment "oh, yeah" on a part that seems, at the time, innocuous. I enjoy the security of knowing that will not happen, and the silence of the people who have not seen the movie. For, having never seen it, they are forced to exert an energy of concentration that I am entirely free from.
Except for this one little thing, a little thing that occurred to me tonight as the film resolved and fireworks of understanding sent spangled sparks drifting down on the heads of my illuminated friends. The movie (which movie it was, I withhold, because my generic point will be cluttered up with specifics if you know which movie I mean, and that would be so annoying) was one that made you think; the plot was original without being frightening or really all that suspenseful, and the characters were lovable as well as engaging, even the bad ones. The point of the film is not blatant, not the romantic-comedy guy-gets-girl routine, nor the action-adventure guy-gets-girl-with-large-explosions-in-background rigmarole. No, the point of this film was a bit more obscure than that, and the first time I saw it I didn't quite grasp it entirely-- at least, not enough to thoroughly verbalize. But tonight, as I watched for the second time, I saw the hidden threads that I had only guessed at the first time, the things that tied it all together and made it a coherent whole. This is my problem: I think I liked it better when I didn't get it entirely.
I still like it; it's still a very creative, enjoyable movie. But to figure it out, to see all the pieces and draw all the conclusions-- well, it's anticlimactic. Capturing the elusive continually proves to be something of a letdown.
This thought prompts the beginnings of philosophical ponderings on the concept of the chase-- why things pursued are so attractive-- because they are uncaught, immaterial to an extent, and thus can be idealized...
But I don't want to think too hard about it, because then I might understand it and well, that might just spoil everything.

Witless

I am not used to this.
I am sitting in a van full of people and loud laughter. There is an atmosphere of jocularity. Joke follows joke, punch line after punch line, as each person takes a turn to contribute something funny, something sarcastic, something no one else thought of.
I am in the middle of the front bench. Reading a book and trying not to get hit by the flailing arms that come with the laughter.
I am used to reading books. I am not used to not being part of the laughter.

I am an alto on the Souls A'Fire summer tour team, traveling to the Bahamas, Chicago, Memphis, and North Carolina. We are halfway through our time in Chicago now. I got kind of a tan in the Bahamas and not enough sleep in Memphis.
And here, it hits me.
In this group, perhaps for the first time in my life, I am not the loud one. I am not the funny one. I am not the one who sings good. I am still the one who knows all the big words, but that distinction is more of a burden here than anything else.
The dynamics have shifted, and every niche I've ever been able to squeeze myself into has been blocked off. The labels I point to when people want to know about me have been stripped away.
I wish I were a big enough person to tell you that I like it. I wish I were that visionary type, the kind who would be excited by this opportunity to grow and change and reach beyond what they've always been. Before this tour started, I kind of thought I was that person, a little.
No, not really. This is actually acutely uncomfortable.
There are a whole lot of reasons for that. There are many things I could say, and have said to myself, many times over. About why this is kicking in now, while it did not during a whole academic year of weekly rehearsals and engagements; about what in particular is triggering certain reactions in me; about why this is logical and natural and to be expected.
I'm kind of thickheaded. Even the most basic of concepts has to marinate in my subconscious for a while before becoming real to me, and generally the knowing of something is not distilled without being jarred by some experience or other.
I told myself before we left that this would be different, even hard. I told my best friends to pray for me, with dramatic head shake: "I think this will be a real growing experience."
Growing experience indeed. I'd like to find myself three weeks ago and give me a good kick in the shins.

I have no worthwhile words to contribute. I can't make funny observations or sarcastic comebacks. I don't entirely know why. I just know that over the past week and a half in particular it dawned on me that everything I was saying was banal, pointless to the extent of embarrassment. So I have, largely, stopped talking in the way that everyone is used to hearing Colleen talk.
I order food at restaurants.
I answer people when they ask me questions.
I pray.
I sing.
Markedly absent is any form of jest or raillery. What I do say is only in the safety of an uproar, when no one hears or acknowledges me anyway.
Two days ago the knowledge of this made me morose.
Today it makes me think.

I am a firm believer in Reasons for Things. Not for all things, always, but I like to analyse what comes my way.
I asked God (having first asked Myself and found Myself unable to produce an answer any more satisfactory than "everyone hates you and you are doing something wrong"): "God, what am I doing here?"

No bloggable response as of yet. For now I must content myself with being the non-entertainer of the group (and there is the rub, friends: not that I would be thought silent, but that I would be thought not-entertaining. And after all the griping I have done about being seen for nothing but funny. Human nature, ladies and germs, is a funny thing). Content myself with being an alto (a sometimes soprano) and very little more. What does define me? It appears that I must find that out.

Walking

When I get restless at night I go for walks on the track outside. I sometimes seek out company for these excursions, but as the semester has progressed I have felt increasingly the need to be alone. This is not typical of me, but I am learning to depend on it. My walks are my time with God. Some nights my walks take me up to the top of the hill, and I sit and talk to him about everything, and tell him what I think, and he responds and we have a good conversation. Those nights, I lay back against the grass and stare up at him, and he winks at me and I smile, and we just sit there thinking together. And sometimes I go to the hill to fight something out because I need his help.

Tonight I walk out to the track and choose to go right, arbitrarily. The sky is big here, yawning cavernous overhead, most of its treasures obscured by the dragon's breath (or by light pollution, whichever you prefer). Only a handful of gems pierce through, scattered across the inverted bowl of sky, but a handful is all I need, to look and trace and see him in.

I tell him a little about my day, and he listens, and I tell him about what I think, and ask his advice, and he tells me the same thing he's told me a thousand times before. I nod, like I always do, but I really think it's starting to sink in. I try to pray, but each prayer I start peters out after a few sentences. They are striving prayers, forced. My heart agrees with them but does not join in, so I stop. Tonight is just a walking night.

The track is populated. There are several pairs of joggers, girls running together for safety. Measured breathing offsets their pounding footsteps as their legs rhythmically swish past. I stay on the outer edge of the track so that I do not get in their way. I hear a voice coming from across the soccer field, a young man who talks to himself as he runs, encouraging his heart and lungs in mixed Spanish and English. He is fast, and has already passed me once, calling motivation to his muscles: the spirit is willing, but the flesh tires quickly. I am still walking.

When I walk with people I walk fast. Part of me dislikes being in the middle of a pack, part of me is afraid I will be left behind, part of me just likes to be early. But when I walk alone I take my time. It's me and him anyway, and there's nothing that could really be called a destination, so all I have to do is avoid Spanglish guy. I follow the paved path, hearing the subdued noises of my jeans and flip-flops mingle with the incessant, whispering breeze. I watch the runners on the track ahead and wonder: are they running to or away from something? Probably just aerobic points.

Tonight is a walk for no reason. Trees set patterns across the path and I flash in and out of them: light shadow light shadow light. I alternate between looking up at the stars and looking down at the path, and I am looking down when movement in a crack of asphalt catches my eye. An inchworm struggles over the crevice. He is about one-third of the way across, and I want to help him, but there are two joggers closing in behind me and I am walking on before I realize it. The joggers pass me and I retrace my steps a few yards, but I don't see the inchworm. I hope he made it.

I decide to circle the track again. Spanglish guy is about to give out. I am pulling for him. The toes on my left foot go numb as I reach the backside of the baseball stadium, and I wonder why I am still walking. The grassy creek bank rises to my right and I look out over the fog that has gathered in the creek bottom that I somehow missed my first time around, it occurs to me that the sight is probably worth numb toes. Overhead the Dipper empties itself into the swirling ether, and I tip my head back and drink deeply the elixir that is the clean, leaf-scented night air.

Once when I was a kid, the power went out in my neighborhood independent of thunderstorm, and my sister and brother and I went out and marveled at the brightness of the moon. I wish, only partly kidding, for all the power to go out here. But it doesn't, which is probably a good thing.

Footsteps crunch behind me on the gravel beside the track and my friend Caroline tosses me a greeting as she runs by. Caroline is blond and athletic and kind, and whenever I see her I smile, because she is that kind of person. I watch her run, not on the track, but beside it, over the grass in parts, and through puddles. Inspired, I too leave the track and cut across the soccer fields. This does nothing to improve the state of my toes, but after a brief consultation my toes and I decide that cold dewy grass is worth it.

I pause in the middle of the field and want very much to say something, but nothing comes to mind. I think he heard me anyway.

He and I don't talk much as I climb the hill again, taking it at a gradual slope to make it easier on my toes, but I say goodnight when I hit the sidewalk and he nods, and I know for the millionth time the peace that can be in wordlessness.

Remember Me

"Remember me," he said.

He was a convicted criminal whose words came from the pinnacle of the Roman law machine-- the cross. His life was ending. His lungs were filling with blood and his bones were cracking with the dead weight of his body.

"Remember me."

Two words echoing the cry of insignificant humanity. We all ache to matter. We need to know we occur to someone. We require an assurance that we will last beyond our physical existence. He was a thief, one who spent his time trying to hide, to be unseen. Yet at the threshold of death he knew the need to be thought of.

He spoke to the man beside him. The pain of scourging had been superimposed on the pain of crucifixion so that it was all he could do to breathe. He had been so pushed beyond the limits of physical endurance that description only mocks the enormity. He was an innocent man willingly assuming Guilt.

"Remember me when you come into your Kingdom."

The thief asked to be remembered. He asked Jesus to remember him. Somehow he knew that here, incongruous though it seemed, was the only place this question could be answered. And what good would it do to be remembered by a dead man? They were traveling together to Death. The only question was which of them would get there first. He did not ask to be remembered by the soldiers. He did not plead with the lookers-on to pass his name down to their children. He asked to be remembered in the kingdom of a corpse. What good would it do?

Jesus answered, "This day, you will be with me in Paradise."

I will not remember you, he said. I will not need to. You're coming home with me. I'm taking you home.

We fear being forgotten, but how could he forget us? How could he forget the thief beside him, when the thief nailed him in place? How can he forget us? Our sins were on his shoulders as he hung.

"Remember me," comes the silent plea. I want someone to care. I want to be on someones mind. I don't need to be powerful or famous. I just want to be significant to someone.
I do not want to be forgotten. I do not want to be left behind.

When he was on the cross, there was not one thing forgotten. The things we wish we could forget were there in force. He took them all, and they crushed him, carrying him down with them to their place of origination.

And when he left, he forgot them. But he remembered us.
"This day you will be with me in Paradise."
Today you are coming home with me, where you belong. You couldn't come before, but I took care of it.
With Him in Paradise, always remembered.

Chastisement of our Peace

I read through my stuff on here again. And thought about the stuff on xanga instead of reading it, since I'm fasting from xanga for Lent.
I didn't like what I read.
I am tired of trying to sound clever. I'm pretty sure I just come off sounding pompous and stilted.

Lent has been interesting. This is my first time observing it; that is, actually sticking with whatever I had decided to fast from. I hadn't planned on it, but on Ash Wednesday I made a spur-of- the-moment decision to join some friends of mine at a church service, at some Lutheran place halfway across town.
I wasn't sure how I liked it. The words in the program were not ambiguous, and not calculated to make one comfortable.

"He hath no form or comeliness, and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid, as it were, our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not."

I don't like reading that. I didn't like proclaiming that I was the one who made him cry in Gethsemane. I didn't like wearing a gritty smudge on my forehead, the echoed acknowledgment of "ashes to ashes" as we knelt. I don't like to be reminded of what I am.

"Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him..."

Chastisement of our peace. What does that mean? Chastisement of our peace? The discomfort that had to be stood before our restless, endlessly tossing and turning souls could be quieted? Did it take all of that to put us to rest? Is our peace so important then?
I don't like to dwell on it. I don't like remembering my griefs and sorrows, much less so recalling that he bore the bruises of them. Why should he care about our griefs and sorrows? our peace? Wasn't taking our iniquities enough?

"...and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep are gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth."

All we have gone astray. Ash Wednesday we proclaim our collective stupidity. Like sheep, acknowledged as some of the stupidest creatures ever to have speaking roles in movies, we stray, and in doing so place the burden on our shepherd to take the fall for the chaos we wreak.
And he opens not his mouth.

Not a word of remonstrance. No eloquent dictum or bamboozling demagoguery. No blame. Not a word. Only a meek compliance with the letter of the law. Despised, oppressed, rejected, afflicted.

Silent.
Ash Wednesday we remember how weak we are when we are loud, and how strong he was in his silence.

I go back to campus and manage to forget about the slash on my forehead, until people start to ask questions. It's amazing, on a Christian campus, how few people knew what it was for.
"Hey, you have something on your head."
"I thought Ash Wednesday was just for Catholics and stuff."
"Um, did you fall in something?" (leading me to ponder how exactly I could fall in something that would leave nothing but a smudge in the middle of my brow...)
"No," I explain. "No, this is for Ash Wednesday. It's not for a specific denomination. It's just...just for, um, Lent. And stuff."

I don't want to say that it is to remind me of why Easter is important. I don't want to admit that I still need an Easter. I don't want to bring that up. The cross was my fault. The pain was my fault. The tears were my fault.
The pain was mine. The sorrow. The grief. The lack of peace. Mine.
He did not just take the iniquity. He took the pain. And something in me resists that, says loudly that I have no need of the smut on my face, that I have no sorrows that need taking, no iniquities to be cleansed.
It isn't true.
He knows it, too.
But he doesn't say a thing.

Spring Break Sketches

This semester has been a big muddle of over-committedness. No time to blog, no time to really take note of the little interesting things that happen in the everyday and mold them into humourous prose.
Well.
I've spent the past week trekking around South Carolina with Kara and Ash and Ash's parents (the trip is very nearly entirely courtesy of said parents ofAshlea...mad props to them). I think I could write a (short) humourous novel based on the events of the past week alone. This week has not been so much of a break in terms of relaxing as it has been a break in terms of laughing hysterically. The tangible results of this break include a frighteningly depleted bank account, a slight sunburn, a hoodie (a gray one, I'm kind of excited about it), and the material for an excessively long post here.
And because of all of this material, for your sakes, o readers, I will break up spring break into several sketches.

Stomach Flu at 30,000 Feet!
Sounds like a B-horror flick. But it is all too true.
The day dawned bright and airy as we drove to DFW from Kara's house. Ash was feeling a little funny, but we got some breakfast into her and caught our flight from Dallas to Atlanta, where we had about an hour to hang out at our gate before flying to Charlotte. As we waited at the gate, Ashlea decided to take a nap, because she still felt questionable in her intestinal area. So she slept until we got on the plane for our 41 minute flight, looking slightly greenish, but convinced that she would be fine.
And she was. Until right after they brought the drink cart by.
Ash and Kara were in the aisle seats across from one another. I was in the middle next to Kara. A middle-aged lady was seated beside Ash and a 30's-ish guy with a goatee (how DOES one spell that...) was next to me. I had brought a book with me to peruse during the flight (Dickens's Pickwick Papers), and when my facial-haired friend saw that I was reading a book with many pages and small print he tried to engage me in a conversation about literature. The last great literature he read was Dan Brown's DaVinci Code.
If you know me, please say you know better than to compare Dickens to Dan Brown in my presence. But for the sake of Mr. Half-Beard I nodded and smiled politely and put on headphones as soon as was decent.
Anyway, I read my book for a little while (side note: Pickwick is hilarious, and if you haven't read it you ought) when I hear Fred (for those of you unfamiliar with my propensity for nicknaming, Fred and Kara are one and the same) next to me saying, "Oh man."
"Oh man" is not an interjection that will typically fill the hearer with dread, but that coupled with the pungent smell that had begun wafting towards me was enough for me to remove the headphones, put the book down, and see--
poor Ashlea sitting amidst an unbelievable volume of puke. It was everywhere. At the risk of causing in my readers a similar reaction, I will say that she had to go change into the pajama pants that Kara had in her carry on, she was barefoot for the rest of the flight, and she is looking into buying a new purse. It was everywhere.
The people in the surrounding rows were highly sympathetic and the flight attendants were highly panicked. The woman next to Ashlea was patting her back and trying to clean her up with those flimsy napkins that they hand out with the airline peanuts. The flight attendant came rushing up : "Ma'am, are you traveling with this girl?" No, she was just seated next to her. "Is anyone traveling with her?" At this junction Kara and I, by various and largely incoherent proclamations, let it be known that we were the traveling companions of the saidAshlea . "Oh good," quoth the flight attendant. "She will have to come forward to the lavatory and get cleaned up there, so here" she thrust into my hands several plastic bags and plastic-wrapped things. "Just follow the directions," she said, and ushered my vomitous friend to the front of the plane. Kara, the youngest of two children, looked at the mess and the bags and made a Face, the interpretation of which is as follows: "Ew, how the heck do you clean up puke?" Whereupon I, the fifth of ten children, made a corresponding Face that meant "What are younger siblings for if not to make one learned in the art of cleaning up waste?"
Accordingly, Fred moved to the middle seat and I went to the aisle, where the Nice Seating Companion of Ashlea and I cleaned up the majority of the mess, in the midst of a chorus of "poor kid"'s and "is she okay?"'s and other sympathetic expressions.

Note: I was not impressed with the service of this airline at all. I did not mind cleaning it up; I felt better that there was something I could do; but needless to say, it is not exactly good customer service to make the passengers clean throw-up. What if she had been traveling alone? Would they have made her clean it, or whoever was next to her? Bad job, AirTran.

We began our descent into Charlotte just as I finished cleaning, and the three of us met up with Ash's dad at the baggage claim, where she got all the parental comfort one desires after having upchucked on public transportation. She was a wee bit queasy the rest of the week, but only threw up a few more times. By the time we hit Hilton Head she had even begun getting hungry again. Whereat we all rejoiced greatly.
And when we flew back there was not a trace of airsickness. Thus we have a happy ending.

Sketch 1. Here is Sketch 2:

When Charlestonian Sidewalks Attack!, or, Night in the ER

We spent the first two days in Greenville, where Ashlea's mom met us and did all of the mom-things for Ashlea that no one else properly could. After two days of nothing but sleep mingled with dramatic reading of the Calvin and Hobbes coffee table books, we repaired to Charleston, where Kara and I saw the Ocean properly for the first/second times in our respective lives. Needless to say we had a Moment.
The night of our arrival in Charleston, Ashlea's paternal parent was in a state of high excitement about a certain restaurant that specializes in barbecue. We set out with high hopes, rumbling stomachs, and an utter lack of directions, the latter resulting in a forty-minute drive to a street that was about ten blocks away. We went in a circle about seven times.
Downtown Charleston is adorable: the sidewalks are all cobbled and bricked and there are more pedestrians than anything else. Little shops line the streets, tempting passersby to behold the overpriced glory of the products within. Music wafts out of eateries that pride themselves on that elusive quality known as "atmosphere," while strategically placed benches and strings of lights contribute to the charm.
About those cobbled sidewalks, though...
It was at the display window of one of the little shops that the females of the party observed certain baubles that drew us to inspect closer. The necklaces were very pretty, and I am certain that my littlest sister could make me one without too much effort. As we crowded around to point and ogle and compare, I became aware of Something in my peripheral vision, hurtling past us and crashing into the bricks.
Spaced along these charming Charleston streets are little trees. Stones are removed from the area around the little trees to allow the trees to grow. I do not offer an objection to this, as I am a fan of the growth of trees. However, when the removal of the stones leaves treacherous pitfalls for the unwary, sending the unwary crashing into the sidewalk, I voice concern. Especially when this particular unwary was so looking forward to that barbecue.
We turned away from the window to find Ashlea's dad rolling on the ground in an immense amount of pain. Paramedics were summoned, and we drove to the hospital, over the patient's protests (he wanted us to go on to the restaurant, because he didn't want to ruin our vacation).
And so we hung out in the ER waiting room until around 1.30 in the A.M. None of us minded, because we were all quite worried for our host, and we watched several episodes ofCSI ( there was a big sign prohibiting the turning of the channel. Query: Why do they play such gruesomely depressing things in hospital waiting rooms? I remain mystified).
Turns out he had a split lip and several broken bones. From a sidewalk? my surprised reader asks, and I answer with the following dialogue between EMS and the ER nurse:
ER nurse: What happened?
EMS: He tripped walking down ___ street. You know the place?
ER nurse: Oh, of course. The Notorious Sidewalk.
Yes, friends, it seems that we fell into some sort of storied Charleston booby trap. The Notorious Sidewalk.
Anyway, Ash's dad was fine, but, as we discovered, is also hilariously funny in the wee hours when on both morphine and Oxycontin. We did not want to laugh, because it seemed cruel. But at times, I confess that we all did. Laugh heartily. The parents of Ash were amazing throughout, concerned more for our vacation than for his comfort. We put a stop to that in a hurry.
Update, in case any of you are worried: Yesterday Ash reported that her dad's hand will be fine. So take that, Sidewalk of Notoriety.


Anyhow
This is long, quite long. I will give you a point if you have read this far.

Writing Art

I've never been an artist. When I hold a brush the most delicate maneuver I can execute is slapping paint onto houses, which I accomplish with considerable finesse, including the preliminary stages of washing, scraping, and priming. But I always wanted to create landscapes and portraits. I drew a waterfall once in fourth grade and thought it was very good, because in the water I drew little lines that meant the water was moving, and I made it narrow in parts which meant it was going faster, and where it plunged over the cliff I drew blurry rocks to show that the water was clear. The rocks looked kind of like the science-book renditions of amoebas, but I never thought of that until I looked at the picture a while later. That waterfall was the crowning achievement of my art career, until I became an APA who had to put up clever announcement-type things every week for study break.

I was taking notes in class a few weeks ago and glanced at the notebook of the friend seated next to me. The margins of his book were covered in sketches and patterns, doodles. His notes were scrawled on the main body of the page carelessly. The most interesting part of the page was the Starbucks logo he had copied from Vic's coffee cup. I looked at my own notes. I do not draw in class when I am absentminded, I copy song lyrics. I amuse myself by breaking up the lines in different places, to see how the change in rhythm affects the meaning of the words. I make my handwriting as flowing and pretty as I can, or as ragged and drifting, depending on the song.

Yesterday I remembered my waterfall and laughed at my artistic attempts, and thought about my notebook, and realized that I am an artist. The alphabet is art for me. I make pictures with letters, with the shape of my cursive and the slant of my words. They are pretty, swooping and full of curls and loops, like birds chasing each other across a big blank sky. My landscape is college-ruled and has pink lines denoting margins. My canvas is lined with blue and my brush is pointy and hard.

I cannot draw a face, but I can write one. My picture is made up of a thousand words, or fifty. When I feel extravagant I fling open the doors of the vault that is the English lexicon, and glory in the treasure within. Here are color, tint, shade, hue; here is action; here is rest. Here weapons of war may double as instruments of peace. And here, buried, am I, something beneath the words, expressed by them, yet always unsaid.
I sit within, sifting through the stores with open fingers, watching keen-eyed as the right ones catch and stay, aligning and re-aligning themselves, telling secrets. Stories that never start and never end, poetry without motion, music with a noteless tune.

In Imitation of Scrooge the Latter

At the end of Charles Dickens' classic A Christmas Carol, the infamous Ebenezer Scrooge drops to his knees before the dread Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come and says these famous words:
"I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me!"

Honoring that sentiment, you cannot hold it against me that I am posting a Christmas poem after Christmas has passed.

I started writing this Christmas Eve and forgot about it until New Year's Eve, when I saw the first four lines in my notebook and picked up a pen. It's not much, though it's long, but this is my bully pulpit, and I intend to take full advantage.

Morning light upon a hill
Where sheep yet slumber, lying still
No sign to mark the place where they
(Whose gentle calls the sheep obey)
Were lately held captive in fear
At wondrous things which they did hear
That echoed from the gloomy night
'Midst beacons of celestial light.

'Twas so at midnight-- shepherds fled
And cowered, and bowed down their heads
Before a roseate, hovering choir
Whose words were full of spoken fire.
A voice that so inspired sang
That through the rustics' hearts it rang
To leave the flocks and seek a child
Just born, within a stable wild.
No place to lay a newborn babe,
A hay-piled manger in a cave,
Exposed to each chilly draft
Despite a tender mother's craft.

Each man arose, for to each heart
The angel's song flew, like a dart,
And pierced them through, and so they came
Just stopping to put torch to flame.
Then hurrying through the sleeping street
They sped along on eager feet
Til reached the hillside bed where He,
Enguerdon of Eternity,
Lay swaddled in His mother's arms,
Sleep undisturbed by such alarms.

And this why they had come so far?
For this the host sang 'neath the stars?
A peasant couple's baby boy
No words of wisdom, shouts of joy;
And yet the shepherds doubted not
This little one the Lord they sought.

The rising sun climbs higher now
And rests upon the craggy brow
Of distant mountains, waking all
Inhabitants of house and stall.
And there upon the path appear
The truants, slowly drawing near
Content to wield a shepherd's rod
For they had seen the face of God.

There are parts I love and parts I want to burn and destroy, but this is it, such as it is. Anyway, critique away, please; it stings, but it's good for me.