Sometimes

But only sometimes, I am struck with the desire to drown myself in my education. I have thought about that a lot this semester. My 3.8 GPA is harder to maintain and I some days I just don't remember what i am working for. Not in a hopeless sort of way, but in an autopilot sort of way. I just keep going with no end or goal in mind. But more and more in the last month I have been fixed on the idea that this is a time in which I have a ton to learn and decide upon. This time will end in a year and a half and although i am not yet scared or anxious for what comes next, the idea of the future sits patiently in the back of my mind, waiting for the moment it can pounce me. 


I have a year and a half to learn, to be educated. I am having information, opinion, theory and debate poured into my brain constantly and I file it away for that moment I might need to know whether I think Song of Solomon is an allegory, an example, drama or something else. When I can tell someone desperate to know the use of Old Testament law. and Honestly, when that time goes, all I will be able to offer is a held to theory. Cause I have 20 years ahead of me before i will be convinced of anything. And i sit here ignoring my Fine Arts class because growing up in my home handled this section of my education just fine, I am struck with something I learned in a class (and trust me, classes and sermons and small groups and conversations with my roommates have all melted together in brimming 19 year old brain). I learned that I am gifted to learn, that I have been placed here, for this season. Not only placed here, but I was gifted with some of the most brilliant bible teaching of an undergraduate level available in this country. Easily the best this side of the Mississippi.  I intend to leave this place knowing all i could. for life, for God, and if nothing more because I have been given a gift. And even though its alright to get a B on my 7 pages dissertation on Ps 7, 9 and 10, its not alright to BS it. Its alright to do less than perfect if I learned. If one day I will use what i said, even if I don'd get it down on paper perfectly. 


I talk better than I write anyway. Anyway. What I have learned this semester can be summed up in the verse that finalized it for me


 Ecclesiastes 9 "⁷ Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for God has already approved what you do. ⁸ Always be clothed in white, and always anoint your head with oil. ⁹ Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun—all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun. ¹⁰ Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom."

Darkness between the Fireflies

People don’t truly want the truth. They want what they see to be true. You don’t want to know that before choosing the right, I desperately and near fully want to give into the wrong. You want me to be perfect just as deeply as I wish I could be. You don’t really want to know how all consumingly sinful I am or that I tire of doing what is right and wonder if it is at all possible to start. Because this is all terribly depressing. Or so it seems. But these things bring me no depression. They are just thoughts in my head.

My thoughts don’t stay here long. They bounce to things like falling in love and whether Jesus would have read books. Which then in turn become complicated again, because I am complicated. It bounces to all the reasons I need to fix this and all the ways I could. Sometimes, if I am lucky, it even bounces back to the bible. Where I remember how screwed up David was, or how much we need people like Moses, who seems to have had it right more than most. Or even to Paul, who even as he was perfect in the eyes of his fellow Christians, could feel the depth of power in sin, as he wanted to do what was right and could not, but could do what was not right.

And I am young and ‘perfect’ and just as foolish as I always promised myself I would not be. But I think that is ok.  I’ve lost my rush to grow up. One day I’ll be old and wise, telling my children how they shouldn’t be in a hurry because it doesn’t last forever. And I have always been one to see into the future. And it takes a lot of pushing to keep me still and in the moment. There really is a time for everything. But we live in a world that says quite the opposite. That the time is when you choose for it to be. Drink now, have sex now, play now, work now. Do it all. It wouldn’t exist if not for you to enjoy. But that sentence loses the magnificence of timing. Things lose their importance when you do not work for them, I have always been taught. Maybe the same goes for timing. Maybe things lose their importance if you never waited for them. Would being in love be exciting if I had always been so?  I can only assume not. And what use will wisdom have if I had not been foolish first. What is alcohol without sobriety or sex without abstinence, peace without war, righteousness without sin? Not to say one of these options were better or worse, or equal, but to say that, as in a song with which I have fallen in love over the last few days, the past is beautiful like the darkness between the fireflies. (Also, he kind of sings like Bob Dylan which is awesome).

So to bring this full circle, what is true without all truth? I see little use in being seen as doing what right, when we pretend it comes so easily, and without ever struggling or stumbling, or falling deep deep into it.

Here's goes somethin'

I am trying to decide whether I want to be funny or serious because I really don't mix the two well. I'll go serious and then I'll be funny someday, ok? Okay.

I cannot believe I am actually doing this.

For a very long time I have held the beliefs that (a) blogging is for narcissists, which honestly makes me question why I had not taken to this earlier. Bringing me to (b) that I really have very little worth saying and will simply wind up making a fool of myself for the entire (cyber) world to see.

I had a blog once. When I travelled abroad or whatever fancy term the kids are using these days is. And as this one starts I wanted to go back and read that.

I really knew something once. I really knew Someone. And its not that I have lost God or the faith. It’s just I have lost the poetry in it. Which always seems to be the first thing to go. I can read what I thought or wanted, what passions drove me. What made me angry and what made me angry with myself. I was once convicted and vulnerable. And I want to be back there. But unfortunately, the ‘smarter’ I become, the farther away and more out of reach that place is. The poetry, it seems, was in the simplicity of the matter. And I am just a lost poet, far too complex to say what I mean or even think it. I have lost focus. (which seems an ongoing theme in my life, as I am currently favoring this blog post over my English homework.)

Since the blog is 'technically' about me going to college, I guess this is a good thought to start with. They say introspection helps with such things, and I guess this counts as introspective? Let’s see if I can’t get a hold on things. Here goes poetic, cause I remember it’s in there.

P.S. I am not going to go around encouraging people to read this, because that just feeds back into point (a) and as for point (b) well, those of you who do find and read this will have to let me in on that. 

P.P.S. thanks Sista. She set this up.