Idle and Blessed

There's been something going on in me this semester. Sure, we're only 2.5 weeks in, but the conditions are right, so it's moving quick. Everything is moving quick. Classes are busy, work as demanding as ever, and new things are on the horizon for the next few months. An internship with the ethicist at Grady and a Pilates teaching certification, to be precise. In the meantime, two things are colliding for me that I feel are going to be extremely formative. It's kind of like I'm looking down on my inner landscape and watching it change in slow motion, which sounds so dramatic. But I have perspective on a couple things right now, and it's a profound thing to have perspective on the changing of your own inner landscape. I have a class on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great martyr and theologian. He wrote a great deal about the church and our responsibility, about social issues like race and politics. He encountered the black Christians of the Harlem Renaissance, and ...

Knife by Mary Oliver Something just now moved through my heart like the thinnest of blades as that red-tail pumped once with its great wings and flew above the gray, cracked rock wall. It wasn't about the bird, it was something about the way stone stays mute and put, whatever goes flashing by. Sometimes, when I sit like this, quiet, all the dreams of my blood and all outrageous divisions of time seem ready to leave, to slide out of me. Then, I imagine, I would never move. By now the hawk has flown five miles at least, dazzling whoever else has happened to look up. I was dazzled. But that wasn't the knife. It was the sheer, dense wall of blind stone without a pinch of hope or a single unfulfilled desire sponging up and reflecting, so brilliantly, as it has for centuries, the sun's fire.

There was no heartbreak and no joy in 2013 that God didn't plan for and lead you through. And there won't be any heartbreak or joy in 2014 that God isn't planning for or won't lead you through. We mark time this way, in years, and we make all these resolutions every go-round. But the trick to it all is just plain faithfulness. There's not a whole lot in this life we can plan for. It won't stop us from trying, but it's true. I think there are directions God wants us to travel in, attitudes he wants in our hearts, but he won't measure the success of our years by the resolutions we kept or the goals we attained. He won't count up the times we were derailed by tragedy or failure as through they detract from our grade point average. The world works this way, and so do our heads. But we have life wrong when we count up the wins and losses. We have grace wrong, and growth and meaning and all the really important things. I like New Years. I like reso...

There's a song that goes, "What a glorious day when my heart finally rose from the grave. When you called my name, I came running," The first time I heard it I was walking down Belmont Boulevard on a warm summer night, getting some air before bed and listening to my ipod. And I remember I lifted up my hands like a crazy person, but it was dark so it's ok, and I thanked God so deeply that it's true,  I came running. He called my name and I came running. Praise be to God that we sometimes come running. I never remember a time when I didn't know Jesus. When he wasn't present with me in my inner world. The Lord is a someone who spoke tenderly to me from the beginning and drew me in, and I responded by loving him, somehow. It is only and all grace that allows us to love him. Mark 1 talks about the day Jesus met Simon and Andrew, his first disciples, beside the sea. He simply said, "Follow me," and Mark writes, "Immediately they left th...

Last week I took three days off running, which is something I haven't done since rehabbing a hamstring tear in the spring. I didn't mean to miss three runs, but it was a crazy seven days. Yesterday a new week started, though, and I went out for five miles and it felt a little bit like magic. I was recently reminded that life is very fragile and short. It's not something we deserve or understand, but it has been given to us for now, and it's a miraculous thing. When I finally hit the road again yesterday and got my heart beating more firmly, I was overwhelmed with the feeling that my lungs are working, and the Spirit inside me is sustaining me every second, and how incredible is that. If you are alive today and your body allows you, I beg you to go outside and run. Just run. Long, short, fast, slow, hilly, flat. Because now is the time you have to live and feel it. I beg you to go somewhere you can feel the air on your skin and hear your heartbeat in your ears, and...

I woke up today and realized finally the semester is over. I haven't taken a minute to let that sink in until today. One semester, fully completed. One sixth of this Master's degree. It was easier than I expected in a lot of ways. A few of my classes were more basic than I was used to at Belmont. But the experience itself was such a valley, I hate to admit. It was tough. Will there ever be a day when I don't question if I'm where I want to be? Will there ever be a day when I don't want to start over with Plan B? I'd like to be surrounded by people who really know me. That would be a good start. I was reminded lately how few people in Atlanta know about my time in Russia and my hopes for that place. Of the things that have shaped me, Russia is nearly the top. But I think most of my friends here are under the impression all I do is study ethics and practice yoga. What happens when no one around you fully knows you is that you feel like a freeze-f...

Trouble by Kevin Devine Trouble tracks me down It's been draggin me around Since my feet first touched the ground And I'm kickin like a kid Cause I can't get rid of it And it's never going nowhere now I duck-dodge to my left I side-step to my right But it nails me every time And I'm finished throwin fits Yeah, I've learned to live with it Marching steady, straight, and by my side And trouble makes no seam Just sweeps in surgical and clean Leaves me begging on my hands and knees And she's always on the clock But she doesn't only watch Cause she wrecks me straight into my sleep When I drift into a dream And I'm sailing on some sea Shootin' whiskey with my Irish bride Till Amy Goodman wakes me up I'm alone in Brooklyn broke as fuck Splitting headache and some bloodshot eyes And I've known trouble all my life And I'm sick of asking why It's like screaming at a set of dice They're gonna roll the way they roll And man you're n...