Currently Reading Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality By Donald Miller see related

So I've begun, read, and devoured Blue Like Jazz. Never would I have touched it had it not been for a respected friend's recommendation. What ticks me off is that Don Miller stole my book idea and now I'd be considered one unoriginal copycat unless I wait another lifetime for new inspiration. I've said all this time that I want to write a relevant book that's not preachy Christian sentimentality but could be considered literature and full of salt. I think I'll always be that unpublished, unsung, but still every bit as gifted authoress who stores libraries of thought in the recesses of her mind. No one will ever know...and my own large epiphanies occurred to him as well. But I thought of them first. Regardless of all that, the book was stimulating and provoking. Great for ruminating. The style and personality was so close to my own (or perhaps just so incredibly human that all feel he must have lived our lives in a previous life. so to speak of course) that I just grinned inwardly most of the way through.

It was real. It was imperfect. Not all of it sounded just right, but that's what made it worthy. It was simply a bunch of human thoughts on very eternal, very relevant things - and doesn't claim to be anything else. It's amazing how keen observations are when one can back it up with personal experience...I think that's one thing to take from the read: don't neglect to live nor shelter yourself from life. And there are many other things to gain and learn. Something on metaphor here, something about love there. I'm going to buy my own copy now and fold down the corners of a number of pages.

And it's funny. The way I pictured him in my mind's eye...yeah he looks just like that. I might have a very slight fancy for him. Naturally.

:grin:

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Nathan is yelling at the TV screen. "What?? That's a travel! Are you a retard? You are! Wow. The world is full of idiots."

I had to laugh. In fact I had to get up and walk into the den laughing and see him on the edge of dad's leather recliner barely avoiding the expletives so I could further enjoy the scene. I have a slight inclination though that it really wasn't that funny, that I just laugh at unfunny things. And when I laugh at funny things it's always delayed. I keep telling myself the world needs people like that too.

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So I've found myself very occupied these first few weeks of summer. From 8-5 I'm up and about. Going, interacting, learning, working. Every evening is some sporadic and spontaneous adventure waiting to begin containing various places and faces. It's a good thing. At the moment I should be working on my study of James..."I will as soon as I'm done," I promise myself. I'm so happy to be in the Word and yet it's something I have to make myself do.

So I was passing Centers For Hope for the hundredth time in the past two weeks thinking, "Oh and today I'll call over there and see if they take volunteer work," when I realized what a lazy, procrastinating, fearful little nincompoop I was. I started slowing down arguing. No, I just don't know if they have a welcome desk to help visitors who've never been...it'd be more polite to call first. Or I could just go in and ask for brochures or something really sane like that! Duh. So I parked, one part me panicky that I wasn't safely on one side of a phone line, the other grinning because it had won. The girl was real nice and her name was Megan and yes they did need volunteers and could she get my number and have Ms. Rosie call?

I left fully satisfied and preoccupied with back patting...not a good thing since I'm not real great with autopilot. I got to the car and tried to get in when I spied a strange pair of shoes on the passenger seat and realized I was pulling the handle of the white car next to mine. It wasn't as bad as last week though when someone hadn't locked their door....it was grand. I got in someone's BMW and shut the door before I realized I was in the wrong place. Now that is a weird feeling. I never jumped out of a car looking so frazzled and suspicious in my life as then. I laughed the whole way home too.

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Tonight I do believe we're going to go buy inflatable rafts from Wal-Mart and try them out on the lake back of the neighborhood. It'll be grand. But not so grand as the view from the top of the PMAC at midnight. I think I became addicted to climbing to the roofs of tall buildings Sunday night. All thanks to Romer and Cade...and what better building to be on than LSU's basketball stadium, eh? I'm glad I'm not afraid of heights.

I have missed this. This xanga thing. Too bad it's trying to be hip when it's really way past it's prime. If I were to put a face on xanga it definitely would be an ugly old lady made uglier by hair dye, pounds of makeup, and lots of plastic surgery in lots of places making her look like one stretched out and pieced together masterpiece who doesn't do the regular old lady things and therefore really doesn't fit in anywhere at all. Sad day.

Currently Reading Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity By Nancy Pearcey see related

This just in:

What you now hear and see destroys your quixotic fantasy, jeering at your fruitless frolics and graceless gallivants. All doers are not achievers.

“Come back to Earth”, they said. “She is streaming, flowing in and within and wins the daylight from your mind’s eye.”

The tune of polyphonic ideality you once heard and then dreamt was reality, was truth, has died.

“Think for yourself!” they wailed. But springing from the wealth of knowledge is a gloom, a force, a leaping, creeping death to your vision, to what you once thought could and should be. Ignorance was bliss.

Once bright, beckoning the phantasmal sun to reign supremely and fashionably, the future yet again derisively dances to the shores of freedom where no one lives.

To neither my surprise nor to your surprise nor the surprise of the weatherman who predicts the evasive, ever circumventing “to be”, everything has stopped, just stopped.

What was expected has flip flopped and surety is topsy-turvy but time tick-tocks on and on and again and again I sit still with my heart settled into my stomach wondering – suppressing the “what next?” as disappointment settles into the recesses of my gut. Simplicity is ever taunting, ever evasive.

What I thought was living turns into the long shadows of evening long before their due. For life to leer at my solitude is my own lot, but to once be celebrated by life? I am forever ruined.

But now I return to my regularly scheduled program.

(Plans for the future were thwarted.
Where I imagined life was taking
me ended up being nowhere.
In the search of knowing lies only
the discovery of what is unknown.
Life bustled last year
but now it lies dormant.)

Currently Listening The Bird & The Bee By The Bird & The Bee how deep is your love... see related

well, home for mardi gras! having 800 pages to read a week is a real trip...folks, Louisiana College keeps me busy. working at the library, tutoring, writing for the newpaper, having weekend visitors, traveling with the debate team, and catching bits of home in between. we have a bird and my dog needs a bath. finally settled into a new room on a different wing at school. good having a sister for a roommate. :grin: 

and...i don't have time to run like i used to. so that's a loss.

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(it was a good first time. to walk across the room and see my footsteps echo on the carpet and hear your eyes smile when i reached your heart. and smell your flesh tingle at the touch of my hand in yours. to taste the pleasure you had in me...i laughed since i could not cry.)

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She hurries over the wet pavement, dodging, puddles, head down against the cold drizzle. Small, she is. Her yellow plaid raincoat against the backdrop of Stanship Hall, the distant spires behind that...she is the bright spot of the entire landscape. Completely unaware of those who observe and admire her unassuming air, racing thoughts, questioning eyes, and endearing smile. She is so eagerly herself.

Ah, she pauses to glance behind her, so conscious of where she's been that she momentarily forgets where she is going. Slowly again she turns and takes a step forward, visibly reflecting; contemplation pouring from every pore until a sharp gust of wind remembered to her the time, reality, and pressures of life.

A bicyclist blows past, the speed splashing her shoes. Following an expression of discomfort, she presses on. Now she is glancing around her...seeking a friend, a memory, any sort of familiarity in the bleak world. There, he joins her, umbrella raised. She recognizes vaguely the Scots gentleman six years her senior from last week's discourse...

"Rather wet, eh?" his eyes smiled.

"You're not kidding, friend. A day for the ducks," she smiled back.

He sobered and looked down into the sea of grey, green, and blue that were her eyes. "I just wanted to be a part of the lovely picture you make."

Her smile faded and their eyes locked. "I'm glad you did."

Then came that moment - not exactly a "minute" mind you; not something to be defined by time. It was as if the world was suspended above the ground and all things that are became combined and hovered, suspended, you see, in the distance between their eyes. The kind of moment from which time is excluded.

She marveled how completely comfortable it was to look at him! His height and breadth, his brow lined not with age but with the thought well thought, his charisma and energy for living leapt from his countenance revealing both flaws and goodness; focus, drive, and confidence were so vivid you doubted not his accented, deep chested brogue.

And so they stood for some seconds. That moment in which time remained still beneath the umbrella and the world paused to watch. For there near The Green was a deep, navy blue umbrella under a foreboding, iron grey sky and a yellow, plaid rain coat. A spot of hope, it was.

Currently Listening Girls and Boys By Ingrid Michaelson the way i am see related

oh my.

Currently Reading True Spirituality By Francis A. Schaeffer see related

hello, alternate life.
i've had no time to keep up with all of you...
apologies.

i've developed a sense of belonging here.
but i'm leaving in just days.
how strange....

and i'll be home for 12 hours before i move to school.
that has to be the wierdest part.
not going home.

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last night was our last "feminar". i volunteered to do the talk on eating disorders. it went really well considering i wrote the speech 10 minutes before i had to deliver it....i've missed public speaking. what a brilliant evening.

and i wore my floor length skirt to the fullest of it's glory.

this summer i've been hiking, caving, rafting...i've been behind water falls, chased by a giant buck, preached at by a bearded cultist...i've been challenged, drained, inspired, lifted up...i've felt Him living in me and through me. i've read more poetry, danced more hours, had more discussions, had more head rubs, worked more feeding 200 people, and had more cups of coffee...i've seen incomparable beauty, felt the wind on a mountain top, watched a rainbow fade, worn my orange flip flops, and seen the eyes of girls whose hearts the Lord was changing. 

it's been the summer of all summers.

(and my legs are more battered than they've been since i was 9)

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since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
-the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

and death i think is no parenthesis

e.e. cumings