All manner of thing shall be well.

Why must it be that there are so many thoughts but so little skill to express them?

If one thing has defined my summer (other than heat, youth, fun, BR, etc.), it has been the swirling mass of thought processing that has been almost constant inside my head. Sure, my head is almost always like that, but there are times when I'm so occupied with the occupations (yeah, occupied...occupations...) of the outer world that I'm not so hyper-aware of what's happening inside my head. This summer it's like my thoughts have been screaming too loudly to ignore them any more.

Maybe it's because I have a lot to process. That's true. And when I have fewer people to hang out with, I suppose it allows me to talk to myself more. (College is just a barrage of people: who can introspect when surrounded by a couple hundred friends all the time?)

Am I alone in the way that I consistently stop, look, and evaluate my life?

I am holding half an acre / torn from the map of Michigan. / And folded in this scrap of paper / is the land I grew in.

What is it about the past that it walks with you? How and in what way do we allow ourselves to be defined by something that no longer exists? Or maybe never existed in reality? Is it a prison or a door to a path toward freedom if we could only unlock it? A secret garden of nostalgia or Pandora's Box?

Will I always wonder why I ended up here and how I got the way I am? Will I wish it had been different or will I be glad for every experience? Will I learn to let it go in wisdom and time or will I continue to draw wisdom from the past itself holding on and not forgetting? Or is there a middle way?

And what about the people? Can we pass on from them or will they always be a part of us and have a part of us in them? Is God restoring the years that the locusts have eaten in those lives?

Think of every town you've lived in / Every room you lay your head. / And what is it that you remember? / Do you carry every sadness with you, / Every hour your heart was broken, / Every night the fear and darkness / Lay down with you?

How are we so defined by our pasts? Or is it just some of us? I've been talking with a girl in my youth group whose past has been blown open and every ugly, frightening, hurtful part of it is running wild and free wreaking havoc on her life. Ultimately, the fact that it has come to light and she is dealing with it is the path to freedom. But right now it's only scaring the hell out of her and leading to self-destructive habits.

I'm thankful that my past is not such a monster. But at the same time, mine, too, can so often have a death-grip on my present life. I was talking to Jessie about this girl and she gave me wisdom as always:

"Do you think it would help if she realized that this is only a small portion of her life? A small blip in the huge picture of her existence. There is so much hope. Storms never last forever, you just have to have enough courage to continue to sail through them . . . . The devil likes us to think when we're in the troughs that this is what life is made out of. In a couple months your girl will be a new person, by the grace of God."

I told her thanks for the advice about that other girl, I'll take it for myself.

The ultimate reality is God's sovereignty and our relative ability or inability to trust Him with all of what defines us. Sure, everything would be easier if we knew why and what for but then where would be the need for dependence? And without the need for dependence, where would be the relationship - the one thing that makes it all beautiful in the end?

Life is a continual uplift of the eyes, upturn of the hands - a continual cry: "We do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon You." (2 Chron. 20:12) The past is behind us down the long lane covered by trees leading into obscurity, dark and still. My fluttering worries and panicky grasp for control in the dark can be transformed into an exhilarating release.

Of course T. S. Eliot has the beautiful words for everything. :) I read through The Four Quartets and my mind is blown because he asks the same things but with so much more breadth of understanding. "Time past and time future" and the still point that is the dance. For us on earth it's all hints and guesses - we don't know why or what for, but we are a part of the music after all, being led by the great conductor. Sometimes we need to just shut the thinking down for a while and remember dependence. The past is darkness and stillness.

"I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing."

OVERACTIVE IMAGINATION.

Collette just dropped me off at home after watching Inception. I was in post-movie daze with the added semi-stupor of Inception's twisted plot. Grandad's car wasn't in the carport. At 11:00 p.m. After staring at the forbodingly empty space in the carport, I had the presence of mind to remember that he went to pick Gran up at the airport. Mind still slightly boggled, I walked courageously into an empty house.

Lights on. TV set on the classical music station. Volume up. Grandad's blanket casually lying on the couch. Things sitting around like people are home. But everything is TOTALLY STILL. Because no one is home. Seriously, my skin started crawling.

I - literally - thought for a moment: "Is this real life??!?"

It's kind of cool what movies can do to you, huh? It is the most deliciously dreadful feeling. It doesn't even have to correspond to the actual facts of the movie: just a feeling.

A song just came on the TV station and I was like "I swear I know this song! I think I've played this song! HOW DO THEY KNOW?!?!?" Paranoia/they're following me/etc. Then I realize: it's Fur Elise.

People seriously need to come home. The movie wasn't even about serial killers.

HOLY ------, the toast just popped.

Guiding Principle Number 2:

(Sarah drew me a diagram)

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

Try --> FAIL

etc.

Try --> die.

>>Success.

is NOT being perfect.

is being a glorious imperfection in the Kingdom of God.

[Diana Panton - "If the Moon Turns Green . . ."]

"Hannah and I have to go to church and let this church group in at ten. They're from .... from .... what's that .... big .... place called? . . . . . . . . San Antonio!"

^^ Sarah's conversation on the phone with Collette as I'm typing. I laughed really hard at her because she sounded dumb, but it's also a pretty good description of our lives. Church, church groups, and having random tasks to do for them at exceptionally random times. Flexibility is the keyword of summer.

Latest update on my flexible summer schedule: According to all original plans, I'm supposed to be on a beach somewhere in Texas right now at YCM's Fun in the Son conference. (Clever title, no?) However! Because we had such a large group in Jamaica, none of the kid's parents wanted to fork out another $500 bucks on another youth trip so soon. (Understandably.) So only two girls signed up. AND plans were rearranged and Hannah is not going. Hence me being online updating my blog.

Probably one of the best turn of events this whole summer.

I'm tired of running around and around and going out of town all the time. Yes, I know that's shocking to people who know me really well and how NOT a home-body I can tend to be, but I'm not a total travel junkie, either, I'm beginning to realize. I was subconsciously dreading having to pack and leave for yet another wonderful-yet-emotionally-draining trip. (Actually the dread was totally conscious I just didn't tell anyone other than myself.) Especially since when I got back from Fun in the Son, I had less than twenty-four hours in Baton Rouge during which I would sleep, repack, teach Sunday School, and then hop on another bus for yet another youth trip. The prospect was daunting to me.

Instead I have a week to recoup, do things that have been neglected because I've been so on the go (like write LETTERS), etc. I am very much relieved and looking forward to more of a down week to process summer and the coming end of it.

Things I shall be thinking about/doing/having fun with this week:

-Barnes and Noble. Sarah's and my favorite place to escape. White mocha, poetry, journal, novel -- presto, a good day.

-Have you ever tried on various personalities? You know, to see which ones fit? Well, I am fascinated by the concept of personalities and I don't really understand the Myers-Briggs thing all that well. SO, I try those on. This week it's INFJ. It's interesting but I don't know . . . .

-Letters.

-A specific crafty project I have under construction. I am hitting some hideously jolting roadbumps as crafty projects DO NOT come naturally to me. But I feel very much like the mom in Elizabethtown, staring down her car's engine, declaring, "You will not defeat me."

-Hanging out with Collette and Sarah, of course. Doing ridiculous things that seem totally normal at the time.

-I'm pretty sure some of the girls in youth group want to have a movie marathon sleepover. After a pool party. Oh yeah.

I miss Covenant.

"Get yourselves sorted out and shut up."

-Michael Caine, 1969 version of The Italian Job

I was at TCBY tonight and as I waited for the guy behind the counter to finish my chocolate Shiver-ma-jig with Butterfinger swirled in, I found myself perusing some boring calorie chart taped to the plastic divider. My eyes skimmed over it and suddenly locked in on "Less calories then--" and that's as far as I got. I jabbed a finger towards the offending sentence, sputtering, "SARAH, LOOK!!" ::sigh:: It's what we call the curse of the English Major. We should all be consigned to an eternity of proofreading as penance for our insensitivity. I mean, this TCBY chart was as well-meaning as a Salvation Army Santa and all I can think of is "SOMEBODY HAS NO IDEA HOW TO USE THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE!!!!!"

How often do I meet life in general with criticism? How often do I want things to be different from how they are and endlessly move to make it so? How often do I forget to just throw my hands up at the kinks and bumps (even if sometimes they hurt) and just soak up the joy itself alone. Like in The Darjeeling Limited when Francis and Peter and Jack are stranded in the desert night and Jack says, "Wouldn't it be great if we heard a train go by in the distance?"

Peter: "Not really."

Francis: "It'd probably be annoying."

I can so be like Jack, just waiting for the train to come back, to take me on, instead of waiting and watching and sitting in silence as Clair de Lune plays in the background. (OK, so maybe minus the personal soundtrack.) I rarely realize that the train would be SUPER ANNOYING. Just chill out.

I think what I need right now is a lot more starry night and a lot less train whistle. Because of my job, I can't stop traveling, working, pouring out into people. But I can make time to hold the stillness before me and think.

"One's action ought to come out of an achieved stillness: not to be mere rushing on." -D.H. Lawrence

I need to get myself sorted out and shut up. :)

So hot we'll melt your popsicle. (Or, Summer in Baton Rouge)

Baton Rouge is HOT. Like, I'm not just complaining and I'm not just being a wimp. I've been to hot places. And Baton Rouge is one of the freaking worst. The real problem isn't the 100-degree weather, but the fact that you step outside and it feels like you are U N D E R W A T E R. Your lungs desperately attempt to breath air and suddenly you're waterlogged, gulping like a big ol' bullfrog for something other than humidity. Oh! and you're drenched.

However. Baton Rouge also has the most beautiful clouds that I have ever seen. In the late afternoon and evening those puffy masses of condensation are like a panorama of the Old West. And they also bring hurricane amounts of rain which cools things down.

So I'm saying that right now it's only 80 degrees outside and that's a miracle and I'm glad for it. The crepe myrtle buds are drooping and dripping outside the window next to me and even though everything looks soggy, it also looks fresh. (By the way, what's the noun form of soggy? I was trying to figure that out the other day because I said that my cereal had become one big "sog" and then I realized that probably isn't a word at all.)

Sarah and I have a new pastime while we're driving around Baton Rouge: Calling KLSU (the college radio station in town) with song requests. I mean, we get so excited about this you'd think it was Christmas morning or something. (Maybe I'm exaggerating a little.)

Friends seeing Sleigh Bells tonight: I momentarily feel a lot of resentment about this.

Hurricane season is coming -- rather, it's here. AAAGGGH!!! Only visible signs of it in Baton Rouge thus far: every other house on our street is having major trees cut down. That's the worst. I mean, I know you don't want your house getting all smashed down by a giant oak, but seriously, what is all that money you spend on insurance for anyways?? And now you fork out even more to kill a neighborhood tree that's probably been around a lot longer than you just on the off-chance it'll suddenly decided to kamikaze into your roof. Ugh.

Something I really love about Baton Rouge is that nothing is pronounced the way it is everywhere else in the world. Like, every reasonable pronunciation rule you ever learned -- out the window. Think French. It's not "Richard," it's "Ree-shard."

Summer: joie de vivre.