on renouncing the self

well, there's a tough one. "renounce" sounds very final. surely we do ourselves no favors by speaking in such absolute terms--it can be so very daunting.

john 3:30 says that God must become greater and I must become less.

those in contemporary christian circles like to throw around the word "journey" quite a bit. it carries an air of holistic and sustainable growth (there are some more buzz words for you). sometimes I think it's overused. but alas, it's so suiting. and surely, if patience is a virtue (and more meaningfully, a fruit of the spirit) than God has it in unimaginable abundance.

honestly though, I decided to write another little entry to express my exhaustion with myself--with negotiating the expectations of others (of friends, of men, of family) and of pouring so much time, energy and money into curating my own condition.

but I should not throw up my hands in exasperation and write it all off as something negative, to be taken care of and swiftly remedied. some delineating is in order: the weight of others' interests is not necessarily a bad thing, especially when others those others are folks I care about--or should. to slough off those connections would be reckless, and wrong.

still working it out.

on blessings

here is one of many reasons why J. Tillman is my favorite singer/songwriter.


If you have a day’s work
And a good word
And a night’s rest
After keeping
The company of your friends
And a woman
To greet the morning with
Then you are blessed
You are blessed above all men

If you have a garden
Or a houseplant
Is there an old man
Who gets by
From the toil of your hands
‘Cause you’re the only one
Who buys floral prints
Then you are blessed
You are blessed above all men

If you have a minute
To get it
It’s so simple
If you let it
If you let it
‘Cause we are blessed
We are blessed
We are blessed
Lest we forget
We are blessed
We are blessed above all men.

on my future

"hypothetical" has been a term I've applied to myself for some time now. one of those adjectives that can be safely acknowledged within the windowless halls of our own conscious minds, but rarely shared with others, for to do so may mean to explain it.

more on that later. for now it's worth noting that I sometimes forget my age, or that it may matter to some people. while growing up I had few of the objective parameters that ordinarily delineate one's progress through life--no normal school, so no precise grades, class trips, graduations, or big summer family trips to get away from the skirmishes of every day living. I am twenty now, and I can't decide exactly what that means for me. am I oh, so very young--with years to zero in on who it is that I should be, you know--being? or does my being on this earth two whole decades now mean that it's High Time I got my act together?

(those sentences are painfully reminiscent of the patterns of thinking I embraced when I was in my early to mid teens: either-or, and very self incriminating. I'd like to think I've grown beyond such an approach and can better realize the nuances, but sometimes I default, and often without realizing it.)

when I was just a few years younger I felt very distinct in taste, virtue and intended vocation. now, things have contextualized--I can appreciate and even love some art I would most consider garish, I'm more inclined to consider deeply the spiritual beliefs of others than to dismiss them, and I no longer want to paint pictures for a living. my father has long identified a profound sensibility of fairness and justice within me; I did not recognize it for a long time. but it has abandoned the hand of cynicism to take up that of compassion, and now it's easier to recognize.

wait--what was I setting out to write about again? I'm super duper off track. 

I think I was going to say something like this: despite my vagueness, and my lack of distinction and definition, I feel some shapes emerging and desires converging, the old ones falling away. the movement and change alone is encouraging. 

so, I'll share the most prominent one: I ache--I actually ache--for land. it's such a pronounced and unmistakable desire that it's almost startling. 

now that I've mustered the gumption to admit as much, I'll really shock myself by taking it one step further: I don't want land just to have it. for starters, I could hardly consider it mine. as nice as it would one day be to walk out on misty mornings and snatch up blueberries for cereal (just enough for that one bowl, and not a berry more) and return to the porch to spend my days reading and drawing, I could never be a landowner for my own satisfaction alone. nor even for the sake of land conservancy or biodiversity, as important as those are.

nope--I've gotta have it to share. I would like to have land to tend it, to curate it, and to share it with those who most need to be on the land and be with the land and within it. if I ever have acreage, I want it to be an extension of my already very long arms, and my already very large hands, to beckon and embrace. 

gosh, I'm such a sap.