so say goodbye

"You leave town for a couple of decades and they change everything." Or so says Phoebus from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. And I must say I agree with him. I don't know about you, but I have no idea how I lived in Marietta for 11 years without a Bar-b-Cutie. And what with the new Wendy's, I'm tempted to return to high school simply for the easy access. Except I think I'd rather eat fish out of the Ohio River than return to high school for anything. Who's up for an evening service at the new Nazarene church on Front Street? Afterwards we can eat Putnam chocolates and stare into the vacant windows of Brownies.

Isn't it silly the way time passes? Audrey's married and Gretchen's getting married and Erin's getting engaged and Annie's living on her own and Tanya's moving to Florida and Sarah's moving to Utah and I...I just sit back and watch all my friends disperse, write them letters in my head, wish they were sitting back with me around a campfire smelling summer like so many youth groups so many years ago. Playing football in the mud and sledding in the snow and chicken fights in the pool, sticking leaves in our hair while hiding from flashlights and illegally spraying our tents with bug spray, volleyball and frisbee golf and eating Tootsie Pops and playing Mac computer games....

And now what? How do so many years of being teenagers fade into adulthood? How do so many careless, barefooted romps through the grass turn into responsibly accepting your diploma into life?

I heave a huge sigh and sit back and watch. I'm always up for a campfire.

road trip

I hate
how clever detours think they are
people who have passionate love affairs with my bumper
gas, and the way it is required to drive one's car

I love
Steak and Shake
Steak and Shake (oops, did I already mention that one?)
the street I passed in either Ohio or Indiana called "Needmore Road"
the sign in Illinoise welcoming you to the tollway. As if we chose to pay to drive on a slab of concrete. "If you drive a car car, I'll tax the street." George Harrison knew what he was saying. I bet it was a tollbooth worker who snuck into his house and stabbed him.
Steak and Shake

William Wallace

I am done.

What does that feel like? It feels like driving 2 1/2 hours in the pouring rain and dark (the dark was pouring, too) to Annie's apartment in Dayton, where she fed me chocolate covered soy beans (what the heck?) and let me sleep on her floor. It feels like curling up on the couch with a blanket smelling of clean laundry, the rainy air coming in through the open window and pink apple blossoms quivering in the breeze. It feels like waking up in the morning and just lying there...just lying there...just lying there. It feels like walking to Rita's with Sarah through green suburban neighborhoods with fields of dandelions and eating a mango Italian Ice, and taking a nap on Sarah's couch even after 9 full hours of sleep.

Asbury College can take our lives, but they can never take our freedom.

Isabel says (or, rather, sings) in Scrooge that "happiness is whatever you want it to be." I think summer suits me pretty well right now as my definition of happiness. Though I have yet to be home since classes ended almost a week ago, I am muchly contended with friend-visiting while I have the chance. Chris in the movie Into the Wild said something about joy not only being found in human relationships, but in the creation God has placed around us. That's true, to a great extent...but I think I would prefer my human relationships over my relationships with trees. Somehow having my plant strapped into the passenger side of my car as I journey around the Midwest is not as fulfilling as, say, a friend.

I am rambling, because a.) Annie is gone and I'm lonely (the tree is not talking back), b.) cigarette smoke is filtering in through her walls and I feel like lung cancer, and c.) somehow my body thought it was funny to tease me with the prospect of a nap and then get excited about being awake. To you, body, I say: Poo.

17 more days

Summer has officially arrived in my mind. No matter that I still have papers and projects and classes...I'm done. I've set aside Supercapitalism and In Search of the Indo-Europeans for Last Days of Summer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I spend my evenings watching The Sandlot on YouTube (it's all there, in 10 parts) and feeling guilty for not doing schoolwork. The problem with going home three weeks before classes are over is that your brain tastes freedom and it likes it. "Wow, this is really good," it says. "I think I'll stay here." Meanwhile I'm still sitting in my dorm room with a stack of books about the history of the alphabet and a stack of "to-dos" that will never get "to-done." If I stopped doing anything for the rest of the semester, I wonder how much my grades would be affected? (Insert maniacal twirl of mustache and raise of eyebrow with black stovepipe hat and girl tied up on railroad tracks here.)

Don't you think it's a little presumptuous for signs to thank you for doing or feeling things before you've even fully digested what the sign is restricting you to do in the first place? For example, five hours and a bottle of water after I started driving back to Kentucky from Wisconsin two weekends ago, I had to loosen the seatbelt so it wouldn't press too firmly on my overly ripe abdomen. Pulling over at a rest stop, I walked into the building to see a sign on the bathroom door that said, "Temporarily closed for cleaning. Thank you for your patience." Temporarily closed for cleaning?? My de-seeded watermelon of a bladder will burst at any moment and you're thanking me for being patient? It would have been more accurate if it had read, "Temporarily closed for cleaning. Please put your knife away and step away from the janitor."

I want very much to be done with classes for the summer, and the 75-degree blue skies and sunshine is not helping me sit in the library with my nose in my laptop. I'm almost done, and I cannot wait to be home eating Mom's banana bread and baking until my fingers turn to powder that I accidentally sift into the flour. I don't even care that I'll probably be working at a cheese factory from 12 a.m. to 8 a.m. and sleeping all day until dinner, then going back to work again, leaving no time to read anything but the nutrition labels I'm watching a machine slap on slabs of cheese. Wisconsin's state motto: "Smell our dairy-air."

"Always go to other peoples' funerals, otherwise they won't come to yours." ~ Yogi Berra

4/9/08

One thing Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a lot about was "this-worldliness." He didn't want Christians to be so focused on being pious and holy that they completely abandoned their place on this earth, focusing so much on heaven that they didn't live in the world. This is what I wrote in my journal last week, while struggling with being invaded by worldliness:

The problem with Bonhoeffer's "this-worldly" theology is that living completely in this world risks the minds, souls, and emotions of those whose faith is weak. I don't think I am strong enough to stand up against the pressures of this world. I am weak. I back down, I give up, I crumble under the weight and flatten when pressed from all sides. I cannot do it.

I cannot do it. The key to living in this world is to abide in Christ, and He in me. The key to living in this world is dying to it. That's how Christ succeeded. The key to living in this world is realizing there is ultimate truth, and we must fill our minds with it. The key to living in this world is looking at it through heavenly eyes. Not "being above it," but living in it as Christ did, and seeing it through the eyes of the Father. Not condescending, but relating. Not judging, but loving.

How are we alone expected to fight off the things the world feeds us as truths, ways to live, things to be? We aren't expected to. Not alone. Jesus, without the divine, could not have done it with merely His humanity. Humanity is frail, and bends to this world. Jesus, who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death - even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Your attitude should be the same as Christ Jesus. (Phil. 2:5-11.)

In emptying himself of humanity, the divine was able to fulfill His calling. Jesus tells us in John 15, "Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love."

What do you think?

29 more days

"Only he who gives thanks for the little things receives the big things...."

When I was eight years old I had a pair of pink jelly shoes with white daisies on the toes. This morning I found out they are back in style. I want a pair; it'd be like walking around in my childhood all summer.

I recognize my priorities, so you can look at my spring break pictures here. They're not as intense as, say, Karissa's pictures, but these give you a taste of the way my mind works. And it's pretty salty.

I have lots of plans for the summer already. I have a list of books to read that grows every day, a list of things to sew that don't seem to hinge on my capabilities (or lack thereof), and a list of moments to cherish, like walks with my dad in the cool cool cool of the evening, or movie nights with my brother, or decorating the house with my mom. I'm going home this weekend and it's supposed to snow. I think God's doing it just for me.

"....How can God entrust great things to one who will not thankfully receive from Him the little things?" - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

tragedy at Glide 107

At approximately 9 a.m. this morning, six mugs were involved in the collapse of a shelf, followed by a head-on collision with the wall. While three of the mugs escaped without injury, the remaining three suffered moderate to severe injuries, and all three remain in intensive care. Two of the mugs are expected to recover with minimized use of their appendages, while the third will never fully regain its former capacity. We ask that your prayers be with the friends and family of the mugs as they deal with the loss of their coffee, tea, and hot chocolate containers.



















Special thanks goes to Emily Fischbach, who responded quickly at the scene of the accident with a vacuum cleaner, a trash bag, and band aids when the owner of the mugs slice open her thumb on a shard of porcelain while cleaning up their remains.