This Just Felt Right

Currently Reading: The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible by Scot McKnight

I have been reading McKnight's The Blue Parakeet for a little while now, and it has really been refreshing. Scot McKnight invites the reader into the Story of God as interpreted by the inspired biblical authors. It's a holistic way to see and engage Scripture. You should check it out.

Also, I drew a picture on the internet:

Clean Clothes and Closed Books

Currently Hearing: Hammock Radio on Pandora
Just Finished Reading: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
Just Started Reading: Works of Love by Søren Kierkegaard

So, now that my summer classes are finally wrapped up, I have been able to remember what it feels like to not operate under an ominous, ticking clock that is ready to explode as soon as it strikes "0."

That being said, I have enjoyed my days and nights by getting laundry done, reading, writing, and trying to shrink a pair of leather shoes. The War of Art, which I just finished at LaunderLand that other afternoon, was a great inspiration. I am hoping that it will serve as a sort of catalyst to win some inner creative battles, as Pressfield puts it.

School begins in ten days or so, which should be interesting. It feels like forever since Spring quarter let out. As Ferris Bueller said, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." I guess I had better use this time off to settle in and do some gazing.

Better Off Alone Together

Currently Hearing: I Was Trying To Describe You To Someone by Crime in Stereo

I had totally forgotten about this poem. It's way too good, and, God willing, I hope to be able to recite this to my wife one day.

"Wound" by Larry Levis

I’ve loved you
the way a man loves an old wound
picked up in a razor fight

on a street nobody remembers.
Look at him:
even in the dark, he touches it gently.

Brought to Life

Currently Hearing: The Cradle by Colour Revolt

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." - Henry David Thoreau

This quote is resonating with me today. It seems, as of late, that God has been reaching in to places of my heart that I had been so out of touch with for the past few years. I think God is pricking these places because he wants to heal them - to make me fully alive and remind me that this side of me exists. The most significant periods of my life are those times when I have felt the most deeply. When I think back, I can remember those seasons with somewhat astonishing detail (for how bad my memory is). I am thankful that God is healing me so that I can view life a certain type of eyes and develop a fresh way of "seeing," taking less and less for granted and having a heart that swells with amazement at the story in which God has chosen to place me. I don't want to look back at my life only to see a dull, amorphous blob of years.

God, give us grace.

Godless Chicken or Godless Egg?

Currently Hearing: xx by The xx

"My own proposition, derivative from the Bible, is that atheism is never the conclusion of any theory, philosophical or scientific. It is a decision, a free act of choice that antedates all theories. There are indeed philosophies that are atheist in the sense that they are incompatible with faith in God. But they are reached only by a will to atheism. This will, and the animation into which it is translated ('There is no God'), are the inspiration of these philosophies, not a conclusion from them."

From John Courtney Murray's The Problem of God, p. 95.

What are your thoughts?

Danny and Annie

I dare you to watch this and not feel.

Danny & Annie from StoryCorps on Vimeo.