And sometimes I don't care...I just trust that I'm following God the best I can.
Hey Tim, send your email address to my Covenant account. I may not have time to write a lot tomorrow, I may have a bit more time when I get to my destination. And send me your phone number, especially if you have a Sprint mobile phone, that way I can call you from the car. Except while I'm in Kentucky.
Got the pictures. And oh, that one of me is kind of horrendous. I've lost some weight since then and gotten some haircuts.
Ain't nothing better than a fresh doughnut every so often.
Ok, my mom knows that I'm not spending Thanksgiving with family, so she assumes that I'm spending it with the family of a significant other. Which is a bad assumption. Well, she just sent me this list of things to not do at my date's Thanksgiving festivities. Should I let her know I don't have a date?
1. When your hosts are serving the turkey and you say, "Breast, please," do not wink and add, "... if you know what I mean!"
2. A girl won't win points by telling her boyfriend, as you meet his brothers, "Wow, it's incredible ... I mean, honey, you'd look exactly alike if you worked out!"
3. When offered a glass of wine, it would be a bad idea to respond, "Got anything with a little more kick?"
4. Culinary compliment to avoid within earshot of the family: "Babe, this is the best meal I've had since that amazing breakfast you cooked for us after our first date!"
5. Say your honey has young nieces and nephews. Say one of them gets a little carried away crying at some point during the day. Don't say, "I see that whining thing runs in the family."
6. "Oh, Mrs. Jones, what a lovely necklace," is a great thing to tell your friend's mother or grandmother ... but best not to add, "I'd love to inherit that baby!"
10. If you ask your honey's parents how long they've been married and they smile and say "45 years," a poor response would be, "FORTY-FIVE YEARS? I'd go NUTS."
They're really not lost, but I left my contacts in Atlanta on Friday. Took them out to drive home with my glasses and left 'em on my mama's counter.
So I've got this splendid pair of soft daily wear disposables on an emergency basis from my optometrist, a former student. They feel great, but cleaning them is much more tricky than cleaning my gas permeables, and getting the left one to stick to the surface of my eyeball in the morning is a real pain in the butt.
So yeah. I know this is nothing significant, there's really too much going on for me to process it all right now. And I'm having qualms about putting the significant stuff out on a virtual table. Ah, maybe I'll get over it.
I'm really waiting for my aunt to find and email me a copy of my grandpa poem. It's got this great line about him bringing us a pound of ground cinnamon, and how it took us 'one whole divorce to use up.'
Just had the last dinner with my friend, the former Associate Dean of Students at Covenant College. I am gonna miss her, a lot.
To start with, she gave back her copy of the key to my house. For about 5 years she's always had a key, I wanted to be able to call someone if I got locked out or if I was out of town and winter weather showed up and I wanted the faucets to drip. I almost lost it right then--we're not really gonna be each other's occasional backup, due to living thousands of miles away from each other.
She's seen me do a lot of growing up in the last fifteen years. She's been a friend I could count on to listen to and understand some of the hardest things in my life. She understands what it's like to be a single "of advanced age" at Covenant and in the PCA. She introduced me to the Maundy Thursday service at the Episcopal Church in downtown Chattanooga. She demonstrated: a love for students, much wisdom, a dedication to a simple life, service to God, humility.
And we laughed so much.
Where am I going to find all that now?
She copied out two poems for me to read while I was on a missions trip several years ago. Those poems have sustained me through many times of doubt and pain.
So she's on a diverging road. She's taken the exit. Packing up, getting ready to go. God bless you.
And thank you for fifteen years.
"Ok, why does God wake me up at 4 in the morning to work in my life? It really stinks."
Without the correction, the reflection, the support of other presences, being is not merely unsafe; it is a horror.
George MacDonald
Grandma says she has had her blue eyes for a long time
and she waves goodbye on Sunday with her top denture
and it’s funny and we laugh
but we don’t know what the churchpeople think.
She has changed, but she’s still a main attraction,
center of action, in the van, teeth in her hand.
Grandma and her blue eyes tell me something she has forgotten,
even though Grandma and her blue eyes have
some unkind form of dementia disorder disease.
I know, I know. It is unkind that some of us
misplace our being and yesterday’s toast,
and being less, being dissembled, we have to love them more.
In I’m going crazy moments, some of the anger is tempered,
some of hers restrained, some of mine forgotten.
But why couldn’t you have looked at those beautiful trees
a little sooner?
Grandma says her father gave her her name
and she’s had it for a long time. This also is funny
and we laugh dimly,
and we hope her day has more breath of laughter
than we saw last year.
Grandma doesn’t understand the time and
why we lock the door. It's to keep her in. To keep her safe.
Some of her is some of me,
running around weeping and sweeping,
having some doubts and delusions and deliberate
churchtime bedtime ceremonies.
I wish Grandma would tell me something about myself
and I wish she wouldn’t bang at four in the morning.
But maybe that’s me confused and dark and
I get to blame her again because there are things I don’t know,
like who to ask for help at four in the morning
and what I might say next and who I might be.
'I learned that her name was Proverb.'
And the secret names
of all we meet who lead us deeper
into our labyrinth
of valleys and mountains, twisting valleys
and steeper mountains--
their hidden names are always,
like Proverb, promises:
Rune, Omen, Fable, Parable,
those we meet for only
one crucial moment, gaze to gaze
or for years know and don't recognize
but of whom later a word
sings back to us
as if from high among leaves,
still near but beyond sight
drawing us from tree to tree
towards the time and the unknown place
where we shall know
what it is to arrive.
Friday:
another viewing of Matrix Revolutions, matinee style
dinner (Big River? Dirty Nelly's? Jalapenos?)
(reminder to self: buy decaf for O)
Bebo Norman (he's Bebolicious! he's the Bebester! why don't you just Bebo on outta here?)
Saturday:
rake leaves
organize cd's (McKay's run to divest myself of extraneous media items?)
have L and O over for dinner
Sunday:
worship
"My colleague and I have seen each other again this fall and repeated our sad dance. I say hello, he resignedly advertises the fact that my greeting pains him deeply and moves on to presumable fresher hells. Go in peace, my dear."
Ok, I know that's completely out of context, reminds you of someone quoting only one Bible verse doesn't it, but I think it's funny.
We all begin out with good intent
When love is raw and young
We believe that we can change ourselves
The past can be undone
But we carry on our back the burdens time always reveals
In the lonely light of morning
In the wound that would not heal
It's the bitter taste of losing everything
I've held so dear
Though I've tried I've fallen
I have sunk so low
I've messed up--
Better I should know--
So don't come 'round here
and tell me 'I told you so'
But it's one misstep and slip before you know it
And there doesn't seem to be a way to be redeemed
Sarah McLachlan
"Fallen"
released November 4
Yeah, I know it is maudlin and cheesy pop music from She Who Stays In The Studio Until Some Musical Idea Sounds Good, but the proverbial and cliched poor poor me song always cuts to my heart. Besides, it is good for humming to myself while walking across campus, it sounds appropriately moody and introspective. And it is great for exercising my rough as nails voice in the car. I'm thinking this might be my song for 2003. Of course, this is the only song from the new album that I've listened to, I may fall for another one. You know how you get stuck on one song from a CD, play it ad infinitum and get sick of it? Well, I try to pull the cd back from banishment at some point and listen to the rest of the songs. Road trips work well for that--OK, I WILL NOT change this cd until I've listened to all of it.
I give up. I relinguish all control of my romantic life. I have finally been astonished. This is out of control.
After one date, she decides to move from Chattanooga to Nashville! How funny is that?
It's the kind of thing you just have to laugh at. So I'm laughing. Really. Ok, time to go have some coffee.
Maybe this is a momentary reaction and I'll get over it, but I feel that I just may not have what it takes to sustain a relationship. Maybe it takes more than I think it should and I need to realize that and I need to work to get to that level. But maybe that's not one of my strengths. And maybe my service to God will be found in a place outside my home. I hope that my heartbreak and thwarted desire can be refocused into a rock-solid, steadfast, ain't-never-gonna-quit, ain't-never-gonna-be-shaken dedication to God. And maybe I'll be able to help someone someday. Take the pain and re-shape it into worship and prayer and service. Walk through the hurt, knowing that I am responsible for it, that I brought myself here.
Yeah, six hour conversations reveal so much. My failings. Some laughter. Bits and pieces of reality. The inappropriate needs of my heart. My failure to rise to the occasion. The need for forgiveness.
But I get up, comb my hair, forget about the lost hours of sleep, and face what the day brings--work, conversation over Mexican food, wonderings, study, reading, prayer. Because there's really only one kind of courage.
Rev. Kevin Skogen's sermons are now downloadable.
The current plan is to keep four online at a time, posting new ones and replacing old ones on a weekly basis. I assume they'll be archived, but I don't know where. So get 'em while you can.