Summer again.  Sweet, sweet verano.  It seems summers are always so different from one another, with a few blessed constants thrown into each. 

Example 1: this one brought an accounting internship to fill up my days – complete with 40-hour weeks, bus commutes, important-looking laptop bags, foreign auditing jargon, hosiery.  Different.

And tonight the lightning bugs came out.  Lovely sameness.

Example 2: primer verano de amor, north-of-the-Allegheny-River-style.  Now I find myself visiting Tim’s apartment in the city, whereupon Super Mario World is played, baseball games are attended, books are read, quesadilla towers are consumed.  Wonderfully different.

And I planted another garden.  I will have so many green beans.  Wonderfully the same.

Yesterday, for another summer regular, I ran the graciously mowed path through the fields of my alma mater.  Year after year I go back for the solitude, the good, hot sun, and the grass up to your elbows, swaying as it enfolds your route.  Exercise is hard to come by lately, and I have wanted it badly.  I’d no idea what 40 hours of sitting, staring at computers would feel like, and it seems that running my old cross country course is my best defense.

Really, though, I’d no idea how much trouble I’d have adjusting to my new life this summer.  I’ve finished my fourth week of work, and have settled into some good and bad rhythms.  I like waking up early, but every day feels like a long, convoluted struggle.  I like being able to identify with what my parents have been doing for all these years.  I understand them better now.  I’ve thought lots about what life should be like, what work is and how it should be, just how much time 8 hours of the prime of your day constitutes, and who made these rules anyway?  I’ve felt babyish and unstable, wondered why I ask these questions while other people thrive in this way of life.  I’ve chastised myself that I just don’t know how good I have it (this is always true), trying to be more thankful.  I’ve thought about suffering.  Yes, suffering.  Something I have puzzled on about time and again, but never feel worthy of puzzling it.  And now my heart has finally found some peace.  So currently I’m wondering if I should just keep settling in, or if I should hold on to some of those anxious questions.  They could be of some value.

While I was running yesterday, I thought some more about suffering.

Now, when you subject your body to that kind of activity, it produces a strange kind of microcosm of suffering and joy in itself.  I believe I’ve had some of my clearest thinking during a run, and prayed most directly, fervently, needily.  And it seems, should I be bold enough to claim it, new vision is received and words are Spoken, so long as you don’t cloud your head with portable music gripped in your sweaty hand.  If all this sounds crazy, it’s convenient to just blame the kickback of endorphins that exercise will grant you.

So yesterday I was St. Teresa of Avila, trekking my path.  As I started into the back field, the vision lay beyond the ever-intrusive golf course in some farmer’s distant field.  It was a dead, fallen tree, and it was downright frightening.  Specifically, the tree looked as if it had been struck by lightning - leafless, black and brittle.  It was huge, and it was on its side, broken clean from its trunk that still clung to the land.  Against the golden field behind, it stood out distinctly and alone.

I was frightened because I immediately identified myself as someone that could easily become like that lifeless thing, if I hadn’t already.  I thought of suffering and realized something I never had before.  You can never successfully compare different experiences of suffering, but you can compare the results.  I would never dare to put my darkened qualms with work-life on the same ground as a mother who cannot take care of her children because she is dying of AIDS.  No one would do that.

But it seems the common denominator of suffering is in what it produces.  There are only two outcomes for any person in any kind of suffering: bitterness or true joy, despair or hope of hopes.  I am the charred, fallen tree, or I am new life.  And the outcome is always more in my hands than I’d like it to be, though I am never left to grasp at life on my own.

Thanks be, that I am not left alone, dried out and darkened in a field.

Summer is always full of new things learned.

Yet it was the LORD's will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.  After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

Isaiah 53:10-12

JiHye's final journal assignment for ceramics:

<-What does Grace look like?
    -size? color? contained or free-flowing? emotional or stoic? if you could show it with a line, what would it look like?>

JiHye laughed, stared at the task in her hand, and declared it too big!  I laughed and agreed.

Driving JiHye to the Outlets last night:

myself: Did you figure out what Grace looks like?
JiHye: (laughing) No...I did not really do that assignment.  I think it's too hard!
myself: oh?
JiHye: I said...it is like when you look at the sun and keep your eyes closed.  Did you ever do that?  It is very bright, very warm color.
myself: yes, i've done that before...that's a wonderful answer.

Today (as ever?) was full of grace and mercy.  Not always so easy, but also never despairing.  Somehow I am still awake and still moving...still "strangely functional" as Julie once said.  And the snow is here, too. 

Know it and declare it- no thought is too weighty, no situation too tangled, no footing too slippery, no direction impossible to obey.  He is full and faithful, even if you and I are not.

And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.
John 1:16

Rampaging through the Wee Hours

Now back in the unique world of Grove City, this year with a sizeable, lovely, and eclectic family.  Suite 189/western wing of Mary Anderson Pew dormitory/complete with espresso machine, enchanted napping sofa, and late-night tribal warriors raising their ruckus one floor above (crazy, crazy, loud girls).

Now waiting for the shower, which is strange since it's so late, but when you are part of said eclectic family these things are bound to happen.  I am thankful, though.  I've been wanting to do this for awhile.

Now...it's curious.  It's strange and wonderful to stop and reflect, to look at words you have written 2 years or even 1 week ago.  To see how time keeps pumping forward, how the old me's keep falling away, to watch my friends' old selves pass away too.  What is left?  He Is.  That is what we hope on. 

I have all these strange snapshots of past things stored up in my head.  I remember growing so much my freshman year here at school.  God was much bigger than I had ever realized.  There were these odd few times walking down my hallway after the lights were turned off, or sitting at my desk by the window, that I felt so acutely aware of God's presence...and it was so overwhelming that perhaps I could even reach out in front of me and touch it or walk in it.  Incredible-sounding, yes.  Sensational, I agree.  Capable of being dismissed by any skeptic, even one like me.  Certainly.  I can't say that I feel anything of the sort right now, while I sit at my desk by the window.  I do feel older.  And God is bigger, still.  So is this world.  So is my sin.   So is the mercy found in Jesus Christ.  So is the work done by His Spirit.  He is frighteningly good.  But of course it's not so much a matter of bigger, since He doesn't change, but a matter of eyes more opened, days more lived, wisdom more granted, trials more endured, joys more enjoyed. 

This whole life-living-waking up each new day is marvelous and difficult, too.  There was this time on the plane ride to Korea that I woke up from a nap and almost panicked.  I realized that I was absolutely stuck on a machine hurdling so fast and so high over so vast an ocean and there was nothing I could do about it.  Then I realized that I could open my window and enjoy it all and that I had better do so at once.  So I'm pretty sure I did.  Here is an exercise of sorts that I just made up:
          1. Stare out the window at the moon (right now.  it's a good one.  it's also quite mysterious and foggy).
          2. Consider the fact that you are spinning through space at 30 km/sec (that's really fast) yet everything is just so.  So much so that you can sit there and read these silly words and not be hurdled into vastness.
          3. Stare at your roommate.  For a really long time.  He/she is alive and woke up this morning, too.  He/she is sensible enough to know that you are acting unusually (if you are).  You two a) have relationship and b) it is such that your words/actions or lack of words/actions have an impact on them.

Oh, boy, I digress...it is late and I am kooky...but I could certainly add to that list, though I don't know where it was going.  I guess I like to put things in perspective for myself sometimes.  He is big and there is a lot of dying and living to know, tearing down and building up to do.  Sooo...yes, let's?

[For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory] Colossians 3:3-4

Currently Reading Jb By Archibald MacLeish see related