a novel

A week ago I was asked what I had learned this past year. I lied somewhat. I said that I had learned that there is a difference between what you need to exist and what you need to live. This distinguished between being a body and "being" a person. And in many ways I am learning that, but that isn't something I learned at school. When I originally thought back to what this year taught me, it was that I can survive on my own. I learned that it is possible for me to create a place where I felt loved, excepted and needed. This summer that lesson is being turned on it's head. In church today I was reflecting on everything I currently miss - my family, my friends, feeling loved, feeling special, etc - and I realized that this summer maybe my lesson is the exact opposite. I feel as if all I learned was nonsense, that it is impossible to create a community where I can belong and that without that community I am nothing. And I'm not sure how to live with this lesson. Becau...

Remember wishing for yesterday to arrive? Well that was me. Yesterday came, right on schedule, and dropped off a whole boatload of possibilities. And while most of me is grateful for yesterday, I still wish I was waiting for it to arrive. Don't get me wrong, it's nice to have possibilities, to hear change clink together in my bag, but some part of me wishes I still had time to blog about nothing in the middle of the day and read a good novel. It's a small part, but it's there. Reminds me of the Noma Video I watched with my hosts last night. It's called Today, and it's about not holding on to the past. How much of the past am I holding on to? Or how much have I let go of that I should still be holding on to? This place, these people, most of theme seem like strangers. Is that because I let go too fast? And, those other people, the ones who read this blog and live so far away, they are the ones who I wish I could hold on to forever. Will it always be like this? Le...

read this : http://www.thesimpleway.org/resources/details/50-ways-to-become-the-answer-to-our-prayers/. I did. And while I knew it was a call to change, I kept checking off all the things I already do. I hate that somehow, in my mind, the few things on that list I have done or do, like laughing at advertisements or writing someone in prison, seem to justify my fears of actually sacrificing something to make a difference. Here, at this point in my life, when I have all the time in the world, I read that list and check off the things I did at school without thinking of the things I could do here and now, in my lonely existence. I know full well that my sadness and my loneliness have to do with having nothing to be passionate at the moment, having nothing to keep me in love with the world. And yet, I don't know how I can adapt the list of simple, radical living, to inspire me today to make a difference. I'm not sure how I can be the answer to prayers in this place while I continue...

Yesterday, I sat for 2 and a half hours on a plastic chair in a stuffy basement room full of people older than myself. I enjoyed it immensely. I sat, comfortably squished between those closest to me in age, my elders by a few years, and laughed, or commented with genuine concern and healthy sarcasm on the issues brought to light. We discussed vision, process, decision making, and our future by listening to all the voices in the room, be they spoken by an elder who has seen much change and may have much reservation or through a caring mother on the behalf of her unbaptized children. The community, the care, and the genuine respect for all influenced our discussion and our decisions as we moved towards consensus practices and future leaders. This community gathering, yes, this annual general church meeting, was genuinely enjoyable for me to attend. That's not saying that it not get dull at parts, that I wasn't tempted to drift off due to the lack of sleep I had gotten the previou...

I woke this morning from a far off place where I had been in the comfortable company of a friend I knew then but cannot now remember. I had fallen asleep once more with the now desperate prayer of "God find me something to do" ringing in my ears and woke up comforted, though still without a foreseeable plan for the day. Somehow this dream inspired a sense of peace and encouragement to keep trying, regardless of how exhausting the search may be. I'm puzzled by this realm of disappearing details and puzzling associations. I'm no Joseph, I can't read dreams as I read novels or textbooks, but I wish I could remember what about the dream was so comforting. There was no mad hatter, like the one who assisted Alice in making sense of her reality, no blue caterpillar to point the way, and definitely no smiling kittens. (Yes, I watched Alice in Wonderland yesterday.) Simply a good friend and a comfortable hug. That is all I can remember. But maybe it is enough. The encourag...

My insides curled and my eyes built up with tears. Compassion for the stories of so many filled me and once again the conviction to do something in this world consumed me. Oppressed people. Greedy pockets. Cries for justice silenced. And the quotes: "Preemptive attack...fight terror with terror." It hit a note deep within my soul. I watched Avatar without 3D. I am not sorry. I may have missed the spectacular flying shows, but I caught the spirit. What does it say of a culture that watches movies about justice, about oppression, and about themselves and sees only the acrobatics and the animation? Do they miss the point? Are they so much centered on amusement that they forget the meaning? More than a movie about flying blue people and amazing digital technology, Avatar is the story of oppression, subjugation, genocide and greed that has been told so many times throughout history and never been heard. The point is clear. The words are there tying the story of Pandora to the stor...

I make list after list after list. Apparently theses lists have value,and at least they help me sleep at night. There is some encouragement that with lists, the day of nothing will pass by in some form of productivity. And that every single one of the 19 individual cover letter's I have typed could be a potential job. Or that one of the phone calls I make will put money in my pocket instead of taking money out. But truly, is that the purpose of all things? I struggle with justifying the details. I have no greater purpose at the moment then to write lists, and to turn those lists into cover letters and phone calls. But why? For what end? And with what purpose? I simply want to love God and her creation! So why must I put fingers to keyboard and ink on mechanically digested trees in the homes of taking printed value from one system and investing it in another? What good is that? And where does it actually lead? The details seem pointless. The process is an endless chase of frustrati...

So I have been informed, by some lovely friends, that my post made no sense. I was half aware of this last time, but I was hoping that somehow my nonsense would make sense to others. Unfortunately, my hopes were mislaid. And thus, I am going to try to write more plainly. But as you can see, that is a nonsensical effort. I have thoughts, and I have thoughts, but they make no sense to even me. Perhaps this mood comes from having too much time, and too much time makes thinking difficult. I don't know. You would think that I would have the ability to make sense of what is under my skin. That in this small realm I could complete parasitically domination. Alas, it does not work. My thoughts escape my attempts at grooming and come forth, once again nonsensical to confound my readers and even myself. But where else am I to unleash these senseless thoughts? I know my blog is crammed combination of intellectual and poetic prose that glides swiftly past some thoughts and barely skims over oth...

I stop to write my first entry in a long awaited blog while exiting the jungles of newly formed Zaire (modern day Congo) that are filled with death and new love, to discuss my existence and my life. In my temporary respite from the despair of survival and the damnation of a Baptist preacher in Congo, 1961, where Barbara Kingsolover’s The Poisonwood Bible has recently kept me captive, my thoughts are clouded with the continuum of death and life and the existence of love and even faith. I must apologize for the morbidity of those thoughts, but if I am to begin a blog, which I appear to be doing, it will be from where I am in life and not one step ahead or behind. You are open to reading or ignoring, to listening or even to hiding within these words, or to not reading at all. Frankly I cannot decide that these words are even legible, but they are from my heart, and hence they will choose to grace this page and some space in your thoughts if you give them leave. While my thoughts find them...