A lover neglected.

I have twelve followers. Twelve people who have chosen to be notified of whenever I update.

To you, I apologize for my tenuous relationship with writing. Truthfully, it's a lover neglected in lieu of employment, it's the friend who's let too much time creep in between visits. It's the tough phone call I've been meaning to make.

I need prayer, I do. Blogging (and the internet in general) has a propensity of increasing the melodrama, but truthfully, I need prayer. It's so easy to lose our heart in the day-to-day. I don't think it's ever a sudden loss of heart, but the sudden realization of it's loss. Like, one day we wake up to find a mirror full of wrinkles and and resume full of excellent references.

But, the heart is the matter isn't it? It must be found and fought for and protected. I truly believe that it's there where hope is and it follows that it's there where the greatest assault must be. Consequently, it's there, in that assault where I find myself.
I need prayer.

On Teaching.

Today marks my last day with students in the classroom. I've resisted the impending last-day nostalgia so far, though I suspect in a month or two it will creep in and I'll spend four days in continuous cringing at memories of lame jokes and accidental culturally insensitive remarks. But, there will be far more to be proud of.

Starting a new job on Monday feels like I'm getting divorced on Friday and remarried to an entirely new woman next week. I'll have the weekend to process and grieve. Really though, she's not new. She's who I've known and thought about for the past few years, it's a comfortable fit, though I'm still a little nervous; I wonder if our hands will still fit together the same way.

Teaching, for me, has transcended traditional connotation of "employment." It's been a vacation from the social expectations of "job." I can say without hesitation that there hasn't been a day I've dreaded coming in.

To be sure, I probably haven't been a real teacher, something more of an observer getting paid and treated like a real teacher. I'm much more interested in conversation and inspiration than curriculum and grading. Probably not the stuff of real teachers.

I think I've cheated the system. I know honestly that I've learned more than I've taught. When I think about it, most of the past two years flashes before me like a movie-montage set to bad (Read: Awesome) 80's music. I'm going to work on capturing as many memories as possible before they're stolen by time and coming priorities.

Some of the most profound realizations:

They're smarter than me. Any teacher would be amiss to think that students are the only ones learning. I learn from 150+ people a day. Each student has a story. Some good, some bad but these stories are, for the most part, true. To not learn from that would be an exponential waste of time.

They Remember. I remember halfway through last year, a student repeated a phrase I used on the first day of school. That moment changed me. He never knew the impact, after all, he was just being a good student, but it was defining for me. God used that moment in ways neither I nor that student can fully understand. Our words matter.

Teaching is hard. Teaching is freaking hard. Teaching is seriously hard. But it's big and it's good and it's worth it. I honestly feel that after this, I'll be fine anywhere.

These memories are mine. They're my story now. I've been in excellent company for the past two years, and it's tough to put words to exactly how undeserving I am, so I'll be quiet and thankful.

Durham Range of Emotion

If this were my group therapy session, what insights would you offer?

One is Not Bold in an Encounter with God.

One of the most beautiful quotes I've ever read. I teared up cried the first time I found this in 'The Ragamuffin Gospel' by Brennan Manning. Coincidentally, one of the best books I've ever read.

The quote is from Richard Selzer, a doctor who wrote a memoir called 'Mortal Lessons.' Manning uses the quote to metaphor our own palsy in relation to our God, and how he twists his lips to kiss ours.

Wow.

"I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face, postoperative, her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth has been severed. She will be thus from now on. The surgeon had followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh; I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove he tumor in her cheek, I had to cut the little nerve.

Her young husband is in the room. He stands of the opposite side of the bed and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private. Who are they, I ask myself, he and this wry mouth I have made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously, greedily? the young woman speaks

"Will my mouth always be like this?" she asks.

"Yes," I say, "It will. It is because the nerve was cut."

She nods and is silent. But the young man smiles.

"I like it," He says, "it is kind of cute."

All at once i know who he is. I understand and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with God. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers, to show her that their kiss still works."

Knowledge is useless.

"The gap between ignorance and knowledge is much less than the gap between knowledge and action"

In my limited experience, this truth has been consecrated through thousands of repeated examples (very rarely my own, of course.) As I adjust to living on the wrong side of my 20's, I'm beginning to understand that knowledge is basically useless. Theories are little more than conversation fodder or mental exercise.

Though it has long decorated the halls of academia, upheld as the highest virtue, fought for and stolen like the breath of a beautiful woman- it's essentially useless.

-When it's naked.

In order for knowledge to bring about the promised fruits of the labors of cultivating and tending to it, it must be married to action. Knowledge cannot be alone. The very nature of action brings experience, and when action is one with knowledge, the resulting experience is always perfect (Note: The outcome or result of said experience is not always pleasurable, but it is always perfect; always usable.) My knowing how to perform CPR means very little to the choking man at the restaurant. My knowing how to subtract only takes on meaning when it is time for me to perform subtraction.

Rock climbing is composed of tons of intellectual and physical partnerships. The beta and the meta. The two are inseparable, (Think: peanut butter and jelly, Lawry's and grilled cheese) you cannot have one without the other. In order to physically assert strength against a rock (meta) you must first know what happens when you clasp your fingers around a hold (beta.) While the two are not exactly mutually exclusive, if you want the experience of reaching the top, a perfect marriage must be made. Standing at the base of a rock trying to know your way up will get you nowhere. Having the strength of Samson without the cognitive understanding of gravity (and your relationship to it) will yield similar results.

Knowledge is lazy. Knowledge wants to hang out on the couch, action wants to move. Knowledge wants to talk, action wants to work. Knowledge wants to read, action wants to write.

I don't mean to say that knowledge or wisdom are not worth pursuing. I'm just wondering - What would happen if we got it drunk, took it to Vegas and married it to action? What would the kids look like?

--- With that, here's a screenshot of a little chart-based motivation I've constructed for myself. The idea was borrowed stolen from Demetri Martin. I'm posting not for accolades (My total for the week was 12, yes twelve) but for accountability. I figure if I post this, you will all know what I suck at. This is this week's way of moving from knowledge to action.

Eldredge and Perspective.

Great Eldredge quote.

Have you ever had to literally turn a lover over to a mortal enemy to allow her to find out for herself what his intentions toward her really were? Have you ever had to lie in bed knowing she was believing his lies and was having sex with him every night? Have you ever sat helplessly by in a parking lot, while your enemy and his friends took turns raping your lover even as you sat nearby, unable to win her heart enough so she would trust you to rescue her? Have you ever called this one you had loved for so long, even the day after her rape, and asked her if she was ready to come back to you only to have her say her heart was still captured by your enemy? Have you ever watched your lover’s beauty slowly diminish and fade in a haze of alcohol, drugs, occult practices, and infant sacrifice until she is no longer recognizable in body or soul? Have you ever loved one so much that you even send your only son to talk with her about your love for her, knowing that he will be killed by her? (And in spite of knowing all of this, he was willing to do it because he loved her, too, and believed you were meant for each other.)

All this and more God has endured because of his refusal to stop loving us. Indeed, the very depth and faithfulness of his love for us, along with his desire for our freely given love in return, are what give Satan the ammunition to wound God so deeply as he carries out his unceasing campaign to make us into God’s enemy.

The Sacred Romance , 106

So often I minimize my own role in Jesus' life/death. Even as I type this (and it's hard to) I sit justifying myself. Measuring myself against the actions of "far worse sinners." Here I sit, polishing my pride.

In all of my attempts to run from him, every time I've shouted hate into the sky, every time I've wanted to disbelieve, he's purchased me.

God, save me from the times in my weakness that I fall into my enemy. Save me from the times that I am strong, and weaken myself to join my enemy. May your enemies be mine. And give me the eyes to know who they are.

Ceaselessly into the Past

I think about The Great Gatsby a lot. And by a lot, I mean that I could probably read and reread this book only and have a fine understanding of the entire world. Fitzgerald was one of the great ones; his insecurity and brokenness gave him the insight to write the perfectly imperfect character.

I don't know what it is about the last lines of the book, but since reading it for the first time in 12th grade, I haven't been able to shake them.

I think it captures the spirit of the book in perfect prose. For the few hundred pages before these lines, Gatsby had been crafting and destroying himself, trying to regain his past "Beating against the current." I love the wind-out-of-your-sails brand of hopelessness it evokes.

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning-- So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

What's the best paragraph you've ever read?