Coal Trains and the Red Line

I have a theory. At my job, I work 8 days on, and then get 6 days off. With this kind of schedule, months fly by in the blink of an eye. My theory is that instead of 30 some individual days, I live my month in 4 segments. With the beginning of each shift or off week, the end is in sight, and so that segment passes not as a collection of days, but as one block of time, similar to how everyone else would view one day. Thus, the four segments disappear much like 4 days would disappear.

Whether or not this theory is correct, I don’t know. But talking to a friend about future plans, he pointed out that according to my timeline of desired events, I would finish grad school by the age of 30. Thirty!! Despite the fact that grad school may take 5 or 6 years, it is but another segment in my life. When one begins it, one lives with the anticipation and vision of finishing it. If we are not careful and intentional, these segments in life will pass quickly, leaving us at a place wondering where all our time, youth, and energy has gone.

I don’t presume to know what it means to be intentional, but I presume that it’s one of the few ways of living life without waking up one mid-life morning and wondering how one arrived there or what the hell one is doing. I fear that our scrambling and striving, without a certain intentionality, will dull our ability to be alive. With every self-interested step we make towards our unexamined goals, we fall further into a void of eventual uncertainty that sooner or later, will overtake us.

It was surprising last night, with the Chicago sounds coming through the window, what the rumbling of tracks and the pitch of a train whistle would do to my memory. It caught me off guard and brought be back to the frigid winters in the boys HNGR house, looking through a frosted window across the yard to see the long cargo trains plow through the evening, much like the grayness that rumbled through my being. Most of that hurt, by the grace of God, has been sifted through time, but I can’t get that haunting cry out of my ears. And now, most of these people who have walked with me during those years are one by one leaving the place that helped form us. One by one, we treat this time as a steppingstone and keep moving on. There is something I want to hold onto, people I want to hold onto because by losing them, I fear losing all that I once knew and all who knew me as I once was, all the while not knowing fully who I am or who I should be.

Roads Are Made for Traveling

Today was spent in an embittered battle against a statistics program on my computer. I have a love-hate relationship with SPSS. There is something satisfying when you make a few selections, press a few buttons, and a printout tells you that your results are significant. Oh, how we love to feel significant. However, the lover can be cold when a wall of numbers stares unemotionally back at you, defiant and obstinately refusing to interpret themselves in a way a normal human being would understand... (Reminds me of women sometimes... zing! ;)

Thus, after a long battle in man vs machine, I am tired. But tired is a good place to be when honesty is something to be sought after. After all, gone is the strength to find another distraction.

A friend mentioned to me that she just returned from a retreat with the outgoing class of HNGR interns. Juniors, doe-eyed and hopeful, waiting to change the world in just 6 months. New eyes for the least of these... jumping in with both feet already wet, their dreams and anxiety, palpable. I remember tasting it in my mouth as we tried to remember that nothing would be as we expected. Junior year with so much on my heart and mind. It was where I needed to be. Trust in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

I commented to my friend that I now feel less hopeful, not quite as young, and certainly less impressionable. "Oh for sure. Graduating changed everything," was her response. Did it? What changed between cramming for our last test and starting our first day in this entry-level job? What is it that left us, subjectively, when we left that square mile encompassing College Ave? What was it that we were so afraid of when our eyes were wider and our knees more calloused? The tyranny of 9 to 5. The wailing of a monday alarm and the anxious glances toward a friday clock. The passive withering of our 4 year $150,000 brain cells. The loss of our hearts in the slow exchange for the subtle American dream, slipped into as quietly but as surely as the sun bows out to the dark. It smelt of death in our nostrils, and we staked our passion as collateral, that "we" would never be like "them."

It's been a while since my knees have gotten dirty. When the rain stops, all sorts of unintentional things start drying up as well. I took a break from thinking. I've sought a reprieve from feeling. I'm growing a new hobby to scratch my aesthetic itch and to feed my money to. I'm putting on some snow treads and road tripping to the great state of Mormons and National Parks in hopes for something new. Something communal. Maybe I can find Someone in places with names like Eureka(!) and Freedom and Zion and Jericho. Yes, I'm sure of it, the Mormons were looking in the right place for God.

All in a Day's Work

Today,

I rubbed the scars on my knuckles and remembered you.

I bought 5 ripe avocados and smiled.

I saw a bumblebee on my dashboard and thought of you.

I turned the radio off, drove with the windows down and felt your silence blow through my hair.

It's OK to be not OK.

A month and a half left until graduation. A month and a half left until the end of our college careers. Uncertainties refuse to remain relegated in the damp darkness of our unconscious for much longer. They snarl their threats in grad school rejection letters. They creep behind the masks of questions like, "What are you doing after you graduate?"

We are not our jobs.

We are not our grades.

But we are our community. I won't miss my assignments and papers, but I will miss people who I don't need to explain myself to. I will miss shared experiences that need no words. I will miss my brothers and my sisters who have seen the worst and the best of all I am, who know how I think and have seen me cry.

I remind myself of the ways in which God has worked in my life and how He has directed it, especially in the times He has given me very little choice in the matter. I try to tell myself that this is the case, that if given a choice, I would probably make the wrong one. But the uncertainties ask me if I'm just uttering a mantra to make myself feel better.

I want to actively embrace and prepare for the change that forges toward us like a runaway train. But I don't want it to hit me like one. If I knew how to anticipate the onslaught of frustrations and emotions, I would. But I don't.

My friends tell me that I think too much. (I think it's a control thing).

Henri Nouwen tells me to live in the present.

Where is my faith?

Jesus, I believe. Help my unbelief.

"A penny for your thoughts, a nickel for your kiss, a dime if you tell me that you love me."

Platonic love.

I'm not sure that there was any decent resolution to this year's Gender Series chapels. (Not that I actually heard them. Only that there wasn't anything brilliant said.)

My thoughts, in short, (as if you cared):

Yes, it is possible.
Yes, I think gender always gets in the way from one side or the other, at some point or another, if only whispered quietly and momentarily in the dark recesses of the mind, but is far from insurmountable.

Here here, I raise a question for you.

Can you think of any better indicator of a platonic friendship between a male and a female than their open discussion of attraction towards/relationship with someone else?

And thus, is it safe to measure one's "platonic-ness" with another in light of such discussions?

(There are, of course, a few caveats to that, as there are to most things in life. Namely, we're assuming this "sharing" is not an attempt to manipulate or make the other party jealous.)

Plus, awesome-points for those who can tell me where that title comes from without Googling it.

Canvas Seas

Worlds apart become worlds collide
As my lives start to bleed across the lines
Unspokens borne out of one affair
Drip and drag their scarlet drops
That seep across these canvas seas
Echos of prayers blown continents far
Cords of distant narratives lacerate local hearts
Convolute my palette
Rend composure, coherency apart.

And good times were had by all.

It's good to pray for someone other than number one.

I'm praying for you. Its truly a joy and a breath of fresh air, and I count it as a privilege.

Until Next Time...

Many of my friends walked today. And others I will not see for the next 7 months, for better or for worse.

So it goes, so it goes.

Blessings, friends. May the Lord bless you and keep you... God knows you'll need it.

Ciao.