Idle and Blessed

Before last year I had little experience with new places. In 10th grade I started a new high school, and I moved a couple times in college, but let's be honest. That high school was 10 minutes from home, and college was still in Nashville, and moving from a dorm to an apartment .5 miles away isn't too jarring. I did, however, spend a chunk of my summers in Russia, which nearly all of you know - and that, my friends, is a different place. I still remember the first night I arrived in Karachaevsk in 2010 after traversing all those airports by myself, getting a ride with strangers, and landing at the front gate of a home I had never seen before. It was Nadya's house; I know that now. But that night, around 2am, it could have been anywhere in the world and there was nothing familiar about it. I lived there for almost 3 months and Nadya taught me Russian around her kitchen table, and so did Tonya down the street, and the neighborhood kids who called me "DJORRRDON!"...

By Josh Garrels Oh great mammon of form and function   Careless consumerist consumption   Dangerous dysfunction   Disguised as expensive taste   I’m a people disgraced   By what I claim I need   And what I want to waste   I take no account for nothing   If it’s not mine   It’s a misappropriation of funds   Protect my ninety percent with my guns   Whose side am I on?   Well who’s winning?   My kingdom’s built with the blood of slaves   Orphans, widows, and homeless graves   I sold their souls just to build my private mansion   Some people say that my time is coming   Kingdom come is the justice running   Down, down, down on me   I’m a poor child, I’m a lost son   I refuse to give my love to anyone,   Fight for the truth,   Or help the weaker ones   Because I love my Babylon   I am a slave, I was never free   I betrayed you for blood money   Oh I bought the w...

Josh Garrels has an an album called "Love and War and the Sea in Between,"and it's full of all these incredibly rich lyrics about journey and earth and the depths of the human soul. If you've never listened to it, you really should. He's an artist in the fullest sense of the world. It will absolutely arrest you. I think my life lately has seemed very much like a journey, a physical journey, with like ancient trees and mountains and clouds that are not whizzing by like I'm in an airplane but creeping by like I'm walking. It's sometimes tempting to go through life trying to find meaning "out there" - looking to the sky, the future, the steeples of the churches, the fixtures of the journey that feel more permanent than us. That's idolatry. The sun and the moon and the paths we walk are all created, like us. They are our sisters and brothers. They are not our parents. But we should not ignore them. Meaning isn't found in the...

Two summers ago I volunteered at the Storyline Conference hosted by Belmont. It was awesome for a lot of reasons, including free peanut M&M's in the greenroom and conversations with Don Miller over salads. But also because I got to go through Storyline and chart my life story, which is something that has continued to impact how I make decisions and view the plot line of my life. You know how characters in movies always have a backstory that lends a theme to their existence? It's usually a little oversimplified really. Bella in Twilight is lonely. Danielle in Ever After is mistreated. Robin Hood is communist. (Oh, or libertarian? Wait, what?) Anyway. In the Storyline binder you can make a timeline of your backstory, and notice the overarching theme of your life. In 2012 the moments I plotted on my timeline were different than the ones I would plot today. My life theme is different. That alone is an interesting point, a testament to the dynamism of our self-understanding...