* not with ink

I just wrote this email to a friend: There is a song by Gungor called "Late Have I Loved You" - do you know it/them? I've been a fan for several years. I recently discovered (via Dan's Lenten guide), that the lyrics of this song were originally written by St. Augustine. As I listened to this song, and thought about Augustine's words, I was struck by the opening line. What does it mean to "love late?" I sat with this question for awhile, and then wrote a poem: “Late have I loved you.” Late have I come to see and know what love is.                 I have tried to control,                 tried to use                 tried to prove and tried to know.  It is only after failing at each of these ...

The last few years of my life have been full of feelings. ALL THE FEELINGS. Scratch that - my whole life has been full of feelings. All of them. Deep feelings. But the last few years have been full of accepting and acknowledging my feelings, which is a fairly significant shift from my previous framework.  I have long been uncomfortable with strong emotions. I didn't know what to do with them, or what purpose they serve. In my mind, feelings were an annoying interference with the rational and far more valued rational processes of the brain (this is a slight generalization, but not much). While I could usually identify how I felt, I didn't always understand why it was important to figure that out, or what good could come of telling another person the emotions I was experiencing, especially if they were "negative" or difficult feelings. It is not that I believed my feelings were irrelevant , but that they were subservient to my logic and my will. If I felt...

I think a bunch (most) of you know that I am going to Tanzania for a month this summer. If this is a new fact to you, or if this is a fact you don't particularly care about, or if you have any other reason at all, please feel free to skip this post. Because this is a post in which I ask for help. And I don't really like asking for help. I'm happier to have you skip this post and feel free of any sense of obligation or guilt than to read this post and then wonder if I'm secretly judging you for not helping me (I won't be). The only reason I'm writing this post is because multiple people asked me if I would be writing a support letter, and could they support my trip to Tanzania. The answer, in the typical sense, is no - I cannot get you charitable receipts in exchange for money given to a "sending organization," and I have no plans to send glowing prayer reports of the great "ministry work" I do while I'm gone. But the actual answer is ...

For the majority of March, this was the refrain in my head: "After April 8th, I'll have time for _____/I'll sort out my thoughts on _________/I can get together with _________." Then April 6th arrived, and I realized that the next 48 hours were about to be insane. And the other side of April 8th was not a serene and barren landscape. It was a surprisingly full and active calendar of deadlines, more school, and socializing. Ack. So I've spent the past week doing things, and as the long weekend approaches, I'm (fittingly) thinking about how to reset and slow down. On Thursday, my amazing roommate and friend-for-life and I are going out of town for a day of relaxation. And, I expect, much thinking. It's been a few months now since I started out with my " Recipe for a Well-Ordered Life ," and I'm looking forward to checking in on how it's going and what tweaks I can make to move out of the old habits I'm sure I've fallen bac...

Last month, I saw Bear's Den play at the Horseshoe (you all should buy their album promptly), and they played an acoustic cover of this "small local artist" as part of their encore. I loved it. Turns out, I also like the original song, despite a general dislike for Drake's ego...as seen in this video. I recommend you jump ahead to the 2:30 mark. Or don't bother watching. Just take a listen.

I am one exam and zero classes from the end of my first year at seminary. One little teeny tiny totally cumulative Greek exam. No big deal. (ha) But seriously. The last eight eight months have flown by. The last year has been just as fast. To think that this time last year, I was training my replacement at my job, counting down the days to unemployment, travel, summer freedom, and SCHOOL. And now here I am. A whole year smarter, and a whole year more aware of how little I know. Many people have asked how I feel at the end of this year, whether it's been a good one and whether I like being in school... my answer to all of it is YES. Yes. I like school. Yes. It's been a good year. Yes. I feel like it has been a year of Yeses. Last weekend, I went to a retreat/workshop led by my spiritual director. It was called "Pray Through Play" and talked about the principles of improvisation and how they relate to our daily lives and relationships with Jesus. One of...