There are times when I have nothing to say, then I am blinded by everything to say. My life is a fit of feasts and famines. I know its going to be a day of thought when I wake up with a Patty Griffin song in my head. The weekend and holiday we wonderful and difficult simultaneously--I opened the package from my family last night and cried multiple times. The things that hit me today are really three separate ideas and inclinations and thus will be treated as such. I'll split it up into little juicy nuggets for us ADD kids.
(Christ)mas:
I was convicted this morning when I got to work especially early. If I'm opening I can't go in until the second person arrives so I had an extra 15 minutes or so to sit in my car. I keep my tiny bible in there for situations like this. I opened up the beginning of Matthew and read the account of Christ's birth, and I realized I went through the entire Christmas holiday without even really considering what it was all actually about. I got thinking about family, and booyah bowling, and friends, and logistics, and a myriad of other totally inconsequential things. I got distracted. And the greatest trick the devil owns is distraction, no?
Roaring Twenties:
I am still obsessing over my writing samples, as much for myself as for my actual applications. I wonder about telling personal stories, because I sincerely believe that the lives of twentysomethings are glamorous and exciting only to other twentysomethings. To everyone else they are boringly similar to every other fashionably unique twentysomething out there (notice I said 'fashionably unique'--it's impossible to be, but since it is currently fashionable to be unique, I can make statements like that. booyah) and simply a stage that every other person passes through--it's like telling everyone's stories about puberty. Funny but overwhelmingly similar. I'm wondering if all I have to say is like that. How terrifying for a storyteller.
"Speed of the Sound of Loneliness":
If you knew that was a John Prine song, then you are way too cool to be reading this. Regardless, recently I've been rereading Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller, which has rapidly become one of my favorite books and I'm in love with the author and want to marry him today, but I digress. I know I've been talking about loneliness in this journal a lot and for good reason; I'm lonely. Then I read this today and it convicted me.
"Loneliness is something that happens to us, but I think it is something we can move ourselves out of. I think a person who is lonely should dig into a community, give himself to a community, humble himself before his friends, initiate community, teach people to care for each other, love each other. Jesus does not want us floating through space or sitting in front of our televisions. Jesus wants us interacting, eating together, laughing together, praying together. Loneliness is something that came with the fall. If loving other people is a bit of heaven then certainly isolation is a bit of hell, and to that degree, here on earth, we decide in which state we would like to live."
Ouch.
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