Journal Series I

The "journal series" is a series of posts based on entries that I made into my journal. I think that for many of us introspective moments come like waves. At times they are very frequent and strong...relentless in their push...thundering to make their presence known...and other times calm and serene...almost as if there wasn't any movement at all.
These posts may or may not be verbatim from my journal. Some of them may simply be reflections inspired by what I orginially wrote, but either way, they are another snapshot into some of the things rolling around in my head..... This entry was made on May 12th on the eve of the last night I would spend in Traber Hall, my home for the last 3 years.
I like to try and connect all my journaling with music...here is the song that bests fits this entry...take a listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUPDzniTrWs


And so I sit here for the last time in front of Traber as a resident. Tomorrow morning this building, which has been a sacred space...a cocoon of college experience...will no longer be mine. The friendships I have made here, the emotional and spiritual battles fought, the countless sleepless nights (for homework or otherwise), the fears and struggles shared, and the memories that were all insulated by these walls will slowly begin to fade as a new generation makes its dwelling place within.

So much of this building has borne witness to the emotional (and I might add physical) changes that have occurred during my time here. But slowly, the memories of mine that echo within its hallways will fade as the cacophony of new experiences, new residents, and new memories begin to fill her hallways again in the fall.

How does one say goodbye to such a place? And is it fear of what might lie ahead that causes me to hesitate at the opportunity to walk out her front doors for the last time? But then again, this place has marked a part of my identity...of course it will be a little painful to let her go.

Traber has become a part of my identity, but like any external mark that is made upon the body it must slowly fade into the larger entity that makes up our external appearance. Traber has left an emotional tattoo...and it's too early to tell how clearly defined or large it is...

The future is far off, and the past merely echos upon who I am. The echos of Traber may fade, but I simply wish to acknowledge that at the present moment she carries the loudest echo of them all.

RA Reflections I

As the end of the school year quickly approaches I find myself more often lost in thought regarding what exactly happened this year. What happened to me? What happened to my friends? What exactly are the implications of this Junior year we all walked?

This is an excerpt from my journal. As the end of this school term unfolds I hope to be able to post a few more of my reflections regarding the impact being an RA has had upon me. I also plan to continue this through the rest of the summer.
I suppose this is a small gift for next years RAs. Hopefully they can catch a glimpse of how impactful their RA year can be.

God's faithfulness...What does that look like through the course of a year? How can God be seen to be faithful within the ways we pray?

...God has been faithful. It never happens quite the way we envision, but God IS faithful.
So many times this year I have clung to that truth and believed that in any given situation that was difficult, God would show up. At times this truth was a harness wrapped around me that could have held a sumo wrestler...other times, this truth was a single thread that was so delicate I feared that to put any more faith against it might cause it to dissolve complete...and the truth would be lost.

The truth of the matter is that God rarely made his prescense known when He DID show up. I wonder if I was looking for some sort of miraculous sign like Moses...a burning bush...at talking donkey...or in my imagination it would usually be one of the busts of Jonathan Blanchard that would begin speaking to me. In the midst of my anxiety, fear, pain, or anguish I would cry and cry for some sort of clear sign that God was there....frankly I can only think of perhaps ONE instance in an entire year where I actually received that sort of visceral contact with God...ONCE...out of the hundreds and hundreds of times I could have used a belay.

But looking back, there are indelible footprints that mark where He stood or clear signs where He intervened and cleared paths...but rarely did He make it absolutely clear where he was present. I think of an encouraging word here or there that was uttered by a fellow RA...a conversation with Kat or Neal...memorable moments that are forever imprinted on my mind and shared with either friends or my comrades....or the memory verse Kat made us memorize that droned within my mind.
All of these memories and moments ping like a sacred echo within my heart...proof that God really does move intimately in the lives of his children.

I think that's the point...the present rarely makes sense, and the future is more often than not simply a dream that we either cling to or run from. The thing about the past is that it has the ability to mark us. And while we have a tendency to focus on the baggage that is tied to the past, we forget to notice the tapestries that our personal history has been weaving. God's all up in there.....

The painter Van Gogh, most well known for "Starry Night," was a painter who attempted to capture what he saw as the "real" behind the real. What he wished to acknowledge was that reality is made up of more than just the physical world we see around us. He tried to capture this essence in the brilliant colors and brush strokes that he used to construct his works of art. In much the same way...we often get caught up in seeing the physical reality around us without acknowledging that this is only part of reality. This becomes especially tempting when we are viewing the present, but if you take the time to dig into your past...dive into places you usually avoid within your own psyche...you might be surprised to find the colors are more brilliant than when you originally observed them...like a Van Gogh painting that attempts to illuminate not only reality, but the truth and substance behind it.

New Things

It is terrifying thing to begin.
To begin anything at all.
The rewards are but rumors then.
The glories are but gossip.
To taste and see, we must venture
into the murky waters of inexperience.
And that is, indeed, a terrifying thing.
But tis more terrifying still to stand ashore
and wish it could someday truly be true.


-Tristam Gylberd

Lighting Candles by The Weepies

http://www.last.fm/music/The+Weepies/_/Lighting+Candles

This is just a song that I have had stuck in my head lately...not for any particular reason...but its a very poignant song whose acoustical mood matches it lyrics. I feel like a lot of Wheaton students end up taking this view of love, and longing...whether its because of their own lack of possibility for relationships, fear of accepting a new one, or simply a fear of starting a new one. Many times, we cling to the beauty of our dreams (lighting candles) instead of trying to make them happen....

I also had a picture that matched this song, so I figured I would post it. An excellent rainy day song.



Trying not to hope too hard for what I want
Trying not to go too far with all the dreaming

Oh, the disappointment, so hard to handle
I'm still in the dark, lighting candles

Late at night I lie awake, think I should go
Catch a train to stranger towns
Where no one knows me

Oh, the disappointment, so hard to handle
I'm still in the dark, lighting candles

Oh, the company you keep, and things you do
Something in my heart will not give up on you

Now that I have got somewhere, where will I go?
Love's a train to city lights
Where someone knows you

Oh, the disappointment, so hard to handle
I'm still in the dark, lighting candles
I'm still in the dark, lighting candles

Ash Wednesday

In honor of Ash Wednesday. A Poem by T.S. Eliot



I

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.


II
Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
In the cool of the day, having fed to sateity
On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained
In the hollow round of my skull. And God said
Shall these bones live? shall these
Bones live? And that which had been contained
In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:
Because of the goodness of this Lady
And because of her loveliness, and because
She honours the Virgin in meditation,
We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled
Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love
To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.
It is this which recovers
My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions
Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn
In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.
Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.
There is no life in them. As I am forgotten
And would be forgotten, so I would forget
Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said
Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping
With the burden of the grasshopper, saying

Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.

Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining
We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other,
Under a tree in the cool of day, with the blessing of sand,
Forgetting themselves and each other, united
In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye
Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity
Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.



III

At the first turning of the second stair
I turned and saw below
The same shape twisted on the banister
Under the vapour in the fetid air
Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears
The deceitul face of hope and of despair.

At the second turning of the second stair
I left them twisting, turning below;
There were no more faces and the stair was dark,
Damp, jaggèd, like an old man's mouth drivelling, beyond repair,
Or the toothed gullet of an agèd shark.

At the first turning of the third stair
Was a slotted window bellied like the figs's fruit
And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene
The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green
Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute.
Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,
Lilac and brown hair;
Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind
over the third stair,
Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair
Climbing the third stair.


Lord, I am not worthy
Lord, I am not worthy

but speak the word only.

IV
Who walked between the violet and the violet
Whe walked between
The various ranks of varied green
Going in white and blue, in Mary's colour,
Talking of trivial things
In ignorance and knowledge of eternal dolour
Who moved among the others as they walked,
Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the springs

Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand
In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary's colour,
Sovegna vos

Here are the years that walk between, bearing
Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring
One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing

White light folded, sheathing about her, folded.
The new years walk, restoring
Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring
With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem
The time. Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream
While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.

The silent sister veiled in white and blue
Between the yews, behind the garden god,
Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke no word

But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down
Redeem the time, redeem the dream
The token of the word unheard, unspoken

Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew

And after this our exile


V
If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice

Will the veiled sister pray for
Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee,
Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between
Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait
In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray
For children at the gate
Who will not go away and cannot pray:
Pray for those who chose and oppose

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Will the veiled sister between the slender
Yew trees pray for those who offend her
And are terrified and cannot surrender
And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks
In the last desert before the last blue rocks
The desert in the garden the garden in the desert
Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.


O my people.


VI
Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth

This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

Thomas Stearns Eliot

The Sacrifice of Friendship: Thoughts on Freedom...and Housing Selection

So the last couple of days have been absolutely GORGEOUS!! It seems to happen at the beginning of every February in the Chicago area, we catch a few days of sunlight and warmth to remind us to "hold on guys!!!" Spring is on the way!!!" Its a pleasant respite. But then its right back to the normal dark and chilling days that we are actually supposed to be experiencing. Life is filled with those moments where the stable veneer that we cover ourselves with is peeled back to reveal just how unstable most of us actually are. February is one of those moments. It's hard to explain, but February is a rough month, especially for Wheaton students. Its dark, cold, and spring break is far enough away to seem unreachable. Then there is Valentines Day....which in our extremely ritualized and complex dating culture is simply the icing on an already extremely messy cake. We do a pretty good job at sarcastically deflecting how burdening of an issue dating is on campus, but Valentines day has a way of redirecting our gaze back to places where our humor can't protect us. And so for a few days we are uncomfortably reminded that our laughter can only protect us from facing our relational insecurities for so long.

As fascinating as Wheaton culture is, the reason I chose the title and picture I did today is because I wanted to talk about friends!! Yes friends!! We all have them in one form or another, and they all bring an amount of joy and stress to our lives that is inspiring (or draining....occasionally at the same time). Much like February has a tendency to reveal our own self-deceptive tendencies to ourselves, there are events that occur in our relationships with our friends that remind us that our motives aren't always as pure as we think they are. I'll use a personal story as an example.

One of the most stressful and insecurity inducing experiences that students on campus face is the ritual of housing selection. While meant as a process of encouraging students to come together and consider who they would want to live with next year...people they think can encourage and challenge them into growth....people that will give them lasting good memories and impact them positively, it more often de-evolves into a process of emotional musical chairs, where the last one standing gets stuck living alone. The system is based off of random numbers that are generated for all students of every class. The higher the class your in, the better the numbers you get. Once you become an upperclassman, you have an opportunity to apply for campus houses and apartments, and also off-campus housing. The point being that the system is not based exclusively on the strength of your numbers. Either you get the house or apartment your going for, or your numbers are too low and you don't.

While you might think that this is the most stressful part of the process, you would be wrong...it's the human factor that exacerbates the entire process, and here is where I personally have been convicted in the whole excursion. When I began to consider what, who, and where I wanted to live next year, a large number of categories immediately flashed through my head. But perhaps the most important question that was flowing through my mind was "who don't I want in my house." This was usually followed very quickly by "Oh man...definitely not that dude!! I can't stand his spiritual/political views...or...he's messy and talks loudly....or...I simply don't understand him and he makes me uncomfortable." These were followed by thoughts of who I thought was "cool," and who I wanted to live with, and more importantly: how I was going to persuade them to live with ME.

While I by no means wish to say that there is something wrong with looking for those you are compatible with, my process of searching for roommates was wrong on a deeper level. It was driven by my desire for the FREEDOM to choose the roommates I wanted. At the heart of my search was "WHAT IS BEST FOR ME?" But the point of community, and specifically friendship is that its NOT about ME. I think that what the housing selection process really exposes is our own selfishness. We have become so used to the idea that our freedom of choice is a God-given right. Our western culture has taught us to be "true to ourselves," and to think on an individualistic level. This was NEVER the point of friendship. We engage in friendships because of our need for others....but this need should be driven by a heart of service, and encouragement...not entitlement and gain. Christianity calls us to radically reconsider what friendship, and more importantly, freedom mean. Our "right" to have things go our way is forfeit.

So I challenge you. As you continue to look through your personal friendships (or maybe even work out your housing for next year) take the time to consider why your a part of those relationships...and if you've really taken the time to sacrifice for your friends. Instead of asking "who don't I want to live with," I should have been asking, "what would be the best setup for my friends, and how can I fit into that plan?" Even if the answer was something I would not have liked...I should be willing to sacrifice either my comfort, or desire for the sake of those I love.



The picture that I chose for today's post reminds me both of Spring (come quickly please!!!) and friendship. I like to think that it captures the spontaneity and enjoyment that should be a natural outcropping of life together. The subjects are simply sitting in a boat enjoying each others company, and watching others swim. There are no expectations, no worry from insecurities, and no agendas....here is simply a group of people enjoying each other. If we could learn to let go of our desire for control and our own way perhaps our friendships would look like this more often.

Chaos and Beauty

Change can be a good thing. I went to lunch the other day with my mentor and he made the comment that he thought it was funny that we always sat in the same place whenever we ate lunch. Not only did we sit in the same location, but the other students that he mentored all had their designated areas that they always seemed to return to whenever they met.

We are creatures of habit....aside from a select group of individuals in society, many of us prefer the safety that comes from knowing exactly what is coming and exactly how a situation will play out. We prefer structure to chaos. As the joker notes in The Dark Knight, we can handle most stressful situations so long as everything goes "according to plan." Chaos is generally an unsettling idea.

I am constantly surprised how much chaos has played into some of the most memorable moments of my life. Whether it was those family vacations that went completely against plans but ended up being some of the most intriguing, to those states of emotional distress that eventually revealed themselves to be some of the most maturing moments, to those instances of national or personal tragedy that are followed by intense unity...beauty seems to always find a way to insert itself into chaos.

Perhaps life would make a lot more sense and seem a lot more beautiful if we could simply let go of our desire for complete control.......



This photo is my representation of Chaos and Beauty...it was a spur of the moment thing...and I remember looking at it afterwards going, "huh...that was definitely not what I was expecting to get when I took that." So I suppose the real question is whether or not it takes a good eye to enjoy photography or if sometimes you simply get lucky and capture a good photo.

......