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.

Looks.

This new design template thing is kind of awesome. Kind of dumb. Kind of hard to figure out where the top of a post is. But I'm trying it out.

This is happening.

I am going to the midnight showing of Eclipse tonight.

Even more shocking, I am super pumped.

BAM.

Be Here Now.

After a brief three-week hiatus or something like that, it's hard to know what to blog about when a lot has happened but I'm not really sure how to describe, explain, or summarize it. I mean, there's always your basic: I went on a mission trip to New Orleans and then went straight to a family vacation in Pensacola (sans oil-spill mess!) and straight from there to a mission trip to Jamaica. Now I'm back. C'est tout.

For some reason, I've been feeling generally distracted all summer. I don't know what it is. Whether it's that I'm always thinking of next week or always thinking about something in the past. Whether it's questioning or just not paying attention or just the way time passes and I've never noticed it so much before. Of course, there's always the obvious explanation that I've been back and forth between a dozen different places (countries, states, cities, continents) over the past month-and-a-half. So maybe I'm just understandably a little discombobulated.

At the same time, all this travel has turned into an exercise of "be here now." Because I've been flung far and wide, I am having to make a focused effort not to think about last week or next week, but only RIGHT NOW.

In Jamaica, I felt more focused than I had all summer. More present in my life, I guess, because I never really knew what time it was and even if I did, it didn't matter because it was Jamaica and time doesn't really exist there. You just experience time as it passes and everything just flows into everything else. "No worries, friend. Soon come, man, soon come."

Now that I'm back, I feel more aware of the things I'm doing. Pouring my morning coffee, painting my nails, all those summery things -- I soaked in the lovely extravagance of them for what feels like the first time. It's wonderful -- sitting in a Barnes & Noble, sipping a white mocha, reading whatever book I want, talking to Collette and Sarah between pages. It's luxuriant, rich, delicious. I'm so thankful for the pleasures of my life, and so thankful that I've seen with my own eyes many times what a rare blessed life I lead. But it's not an insulation.

Here's what I'm thinking about today:

Let us pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears / while we all sup sorrow with the poor. / There's a song that will linger forever in our ears. / Oh, hard times, come again no more.