A Jeep In Summer

Favorite Quote From Playing UNO This Weekend

Daddy, you are a speedbump.

Favorite Random Blog Quote Of Today

You read my eyes just like a diary...

Why was I there? From time to time, people find my blog by searching for 'pimp my Jeep' (thanks so much Matty, your love is extravagant!) and I followed one of the links on the msn search.

Just Call Me Casey Kasem

Top 10 Breakup Songs Ever

1. 'Breathe' Melissa Etheridge

I played the fool today
And I just dream of vanishing into the crowd
Longing for home again
Home is a feeling I buried in you

I'm alright, I'm alright
It only hurts when I breathe

2. 'Remember When It Rained' Josh Groban
3. 'Famous Last Words' Billy Joel

Probably not a breakup song as a whole, but the chorus is certainly a breakup chorus.

4. 'Never' Heart
5. 'Alone' Heart
6. 'I Might Get Over You' Kenny Chesney
7. 'From The Station' Marc Cohn

Me I keep looking from the corner of my eye
Looking for some reason I should run
I know you don't have your answers either baby
But at least you know that you can really love someone

8. 'Believe In Love' Russ Taff

After we have listened to everything there is left to say
Watching the intended reality slowly fade away
Why is all we desire taken from our hand
Every dream is drifting away

There is understanding for everyone who has ears to hear
No more looking over your shoulder for someone to appear
Maybe you should be looking right into His eyes
Say goodbye to someone else's lies

I've got to know
Do you believe in love
And all the things you've searched the world to find
But know nothing of

Through the sun
Through the fire and the rain
Nobody will ever hurt you
Nobody will break your world in two
If you believe in love

9. 'When Love Takes You In' Steven Curtis Chapman
10.

And Speaking Of The Truth

It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.

I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley

Billy Collins, from 'Litany'

Complexity

"The truth, the whole truth, tends to be complex, its contentments and joys wrestled out of doubt, pain, change."

"Any notion I still had of monks as otherworldly anachronisms went out the window and was lost in the Manhattan night. If monks are crazy to live the way they do, maybe the world needs more such craziness, what Matthew Kelty has termed 'the madness of great love.' My narrow world had just opened wide, and I had glimpsed such a love."

Kathleen Norris, from Dakota

Renewal

Your completed passport was mailed on 6/22/04 from the National Passport Center in Portsmouth, NH.

Thank you.
National Passport Information Center
006

Quote From This Week

"It's a good thing that PowerBars exist. And that I know about them."

Rhetorical

Who in their right mind starts cleaning the refrigerator at 9 pm?

Another note: just got back from selling two boxes of books at McKay's. Picked up Mary Chapin Carpenter's latest AND INXS's 'Elegantly Wasted.'

On the schedule for tomorrow: scatter grass seed before leaving for work so as to take advantage of bigtime rainstorms, lunch with L, prayer meeting, late dinner with the C's.

And start packing for family weekend on Lake Guntersville.

Ok, maybe a mixed drink will help with the cleaning.

from 'Naming the Stars' by Joyce Sutphen

This will be another one of those
loose changes, the rearrangement of
hearts, just parts of old lives
patched together, gathered into
a dim constellation, small consolation.

Look, we will say, you can almost see
the outline there: her fingertips
touching his, the faint fusion
of two bodies breaking into light.

Less Blogging Until Monday

I'm off to Florida to be in another wedding. (The two main participants are pictured above.) Not leaving until Thursday, but tomorrow will be taken up with last minute end-of-the-fiscal-year stuff at work, babysitting, haircut, laundry, swimming, prayer meeting, then serious conversation over dinner.

I'm taking part of the emotional support system, O and A, with me. L has to stay home and make money, and sixteen month old A is gonna be my date!

The house is almost empty. Tonight is W's last night. Potent mixture of sadness and excitement. No, not excitement, a better word is anticipation.

Next week, when all the festivities are over, when I travel home, I'll be parking in the driveway. There won't be anyone arriving before I do, necessitating leaving my car in the street. The lights won't be on, the AC will be off. I'm trying not to foresee an empty house as lonely, though I know that'll be a huge part of what I'll be facing. I'm going to sort through physical and emotional stuff, get rid of things I don't need, let it all sink in, and clean. Then I'm going to rearrange furniture.

For better or for worse, I invested a significant portion of my concept of home in these guys. They're leaving for good reasons, and I'm happy for them. But they're still leaving. I guess I must feel like all those parents dropping their kids off at college.

I think we've ended well. The moments when I'm not sure about that I'll just chalk up to my own insecurities.

It is as S says--God brings people into your life for a reason, for a season, or for a lifetime. This season is over. It wasn't meant to last. I hereby let go of it.

From St. Hilary

Everything that seems empty is full of the angels of God.

True Quote Of The Day

'How are you doing?'

'My ability to function comes and goes.'

When You Are Old

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face

William Butler Yeats

From A Subject Line

It wasn't lost, just hard to find. Like some of the really important things in my life.

To continue. Things in the category of not lost but hard to find can include: driver's license, friendship, a poem from ten years ago, mom and dad, that credit card receipt that the office of accounting needs, and sleep.

A friend said recently, or was it a couple of months ago, 'Maybe you'll get them back someday.' Doesn't anyone realize that the waiting can kill whatever was there in the first place?

But, oh yeah, all things are made new. That's the line I always forget.

I'll be waiting
I may be young or old and gray
Counting the days
I'll be waiting
And when I finally see you come
I'll run when I see you

And even if you never do return
Still I will have learned
How to love you better

Journeys All Run Together

for Carl E. Samuelson, with thanks to Cliff Foreman for Jack Kerouac

Grass and the far away smell of magnolia come from the South to rest in this Illinois hill graveyard. I am coming home from Iowa, where I never thought I would be again. But when friends move, you visit. First you help them move, pulling the U-Haul trailer far beyond the speed limits of wisdom, taking pictures of the sunset, praying fo rthe rain to stop, smoking lots of cigarettes in the church van.
Later this summer many will pray for the rain to stop and you know what, I'll be back, driving through the remnant of the floods at midnight, guessing at the water. I'm off my bus long enough now, a few minutes, to stop for homage in the middle of this nation--lovely and crossed by roads, highways carry letters and produce, carry Washington apples and fresh Midwest corn to everywhere, carry machines and books. These roads carry love.
These roads carried you, grandfather, to me on Christmas, you drove all the way. What sermons did you think and forget? You brought pounds and pounds of wheat, and a large quantity of cinnamon that took us one whole divorce to use up. Surely I am the mad recipient of your driving genetics, for I go until I stop. Stop for gas. For coffee. For beauty. I drive so many miles, to wherever I'm going, before I sleep. I don't think, I go. I go faster than guilt, faster than my weariness, faster than is good for me. I go faster than Sal Paradise hitchiking in the back of a truck drinking whiskey with good boys and the bums of the night flying through America. Speeding on the beautiful highways. America's had a love affair with the car. Baby, I'm the child.
I drive to St. Louis just before Christmas on another trip, for all roads lead to St. Louis, and while I sleep she goes to church. And then it's across Kansas toward the mountains with a diva singing. Kansas was not beautiful, but she still is, the queen of the road. She still is.
I have come here to your stone to cry, I'm praying for the rain to stop for a minute. And it does. I have been here in the snow on the ground, searching for your place, and now I stand in the rain. I stare behind me at the beautiful that is there every day.
Will I be here again? In the real past I was home in the South on burial day. In the history I have changed in my mind I am here with everyone else for your burial, so what do I place on the stone after you have gone to sleep? A ring of hope. A ring of grandson. All the words that mean so much to me.
The back roads bring me to you. What was you. This is sudden, I stop to turn a page, and one mourning thought is gone into another. I love you Illinois.

Someone Thought I Needed Encouragement And A Laugh

Tonight's Bachelor Party Speech

So it's come to this. You've found somebody willing to spend a lifetime with you. Outstanding. Congratulations. But wait. Before any such blissful celebration can be realized, before that short march that precedes the long, felicitous journey of a life well shared, there are some things you have to learn. I'm sure you've already learned some of them, but you'll just have to bear with us.

Fear not--at least, not much. We have gathered tonight so that you can hear the experience of men who have trod the marital road before you. We will build on some traditions, tear down others, and present advice and lore that will gird you with the knowledge necessary to run the rest of your (and her) life. It is sage counsel, and we trust it will help you celebrate this institution as one that you, indeed, can't disparage. At least, not too often. As the old Armenian toast goes, "May you grow old on one pillow."

I know that a single guy shouldn't be able to give any such advice, but I'm going to give some anyway. Just because I love ya.

She has no right to know what will happen at this bachelor party.

Thousands of dollars you have procured and hemorraged. Don't worry, it's only money.

Regarding next Friday: Are you aware that a wedding is tantamount to the elevation of your bride to deity for a day, while you remain decidedly a supporting actor? My brother, be content. I know this goes against the concept of Biblical headship, but you're just gonna have to wait until you leave the reception. Until then, she's in control. And you know what they say in any house of consequence--If mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.

Even though legions of relatives and friends will have assembled, even though so many other people (not you) have worked hard for your wedding day to be perfect, remember:

1. It's all right to be scared.
2. It is not all right to soil your tuxedo.

Drinking guidelines for the groom: one drink for every two glasses of water.

On the honeymoon: relax, enjoy everything, roll with problems, don't sweat the small things.

And don't argue on hotel balconies. Just don't.

My last piece of advice:
I know that you already do, but remember to have the heart of a servant.......so pick up my tux.

No Reflections On Tina Turner

So much pain and no good reason why
You've cried until the tears run dry

Somewhere down the road
There will be answers for the questions
Somewhere down the road
Though we cannot see it now
Somewhere down the road
You will find
Mighty arms reaching for you
And you will find the answers
At the end of the road

from 'Somewhere Down The Road'
Amy Grant

Continuing Email Conversation

"God is laying it on thick right now with you, I wonder what He has for you.   While I'm thinking about it, isn't it a pristine journey we're on with Jesus.  I say pristine to mean, untouched.  Each day, what He has for us, and where He has us, is untouchable to anyone else.  Nobody and especially no circumstance, at any given point, can interfere with our dialogue, or, lack thereof, with Jesus.  We own it. So How we respond, how we worship Him, how wide our eyes open to Him, is pristine.  The sun sets on our journey of the day, and what passes is merely that particular part of the trail, never to be revisited, relived.  It both vanishes and stores up treasures for us, but we never revisit it again.  The good thing about failing to worship one day is that we get another opportunity in the morning.  And the record of sin of course is wiped away.  I think it a beautiful privilege to be a follower of Jesus.  My heart posture and tune look and sound unique to Jesus, unique to the rest of creation, because no one else is like me.  I think that is intriguing."

Mirror In The Sky,

What is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

Well, I've been afraid of changing
'Cause I built my life around you

So take this love and take it down

[You gotta love Stevie Nicks, cutting right to the heart with that scratchy timeless voice from the land of songs, facing what has been, dealing with what will be, letting it rip, letting me fly, singing me through the speeding night, sometimes showing me a road sign of truth, but mostly just being there.]

[Tomorrow, Tina Turner. Another girl who sings like a guy.]

An Apt, Though Slightly Caustic Description Of Romantic Failure

"So if I asked you about art you could give me the skinny on every art book ever written...Michelangelo? You know a lot about him I bet. Life's work, criticisms, political aspirations. But you couldn't tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You've never stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling. And if I asked you about women I'm sure you could give me a syllabus of your personal favorites, and maybe you've been laid a few times too. But you couldn't tell me how it feels to wake up next to a woman and be truly happy.

And if I asked you about love I'd get a sonnet, but you've never looked at a woman and been truly vulnerable. Known that someone could kill you with a look. That someone could rescue you from grief. That God had put an angel on Earth just for you. And you wouldn't know how it felt to be her angel. To have the love be there for her forever. Through anything.

And you wouldn't know about real loss, because that only occurs when you lose something you love more than you love yourself, and you've never dared to love anything that much."

from _Good Will Hunting_

After Sunday

Somehow my pastor knows what I need to hear every week. Yesterday morning he preached about Jesus saying at the end of John, If he remains, what does it matter to you? Meaning that we should get our eyes off of other people and follow Jesus. And last night he preached about the end of 1 Kings 18, saying that Elijah was at his most powerful when he was praying. So I need to not envy G and W, I need to not wonder why we've been given different life circumstances, and I need to embrace the life of faith, get on my knees, and get on with the work God has put before me.

Home Alone

This is what it's going to be like pretty soon. Pretty soon being less than two weeks.

(Just got home from the mama of all road trips: Baltimore, Charleston, SC, and then rural Pennsylvania. I smell, my eyes are baggy, my back hurts a little bit, and I'm going to stay home for at least a week and a half. The remaining housemate is off to a wedding. That's why I'm pretending to be Macaulay Culkin.)

Instead of hearing the welcoming sound of car-arriving, I'll mistakenly look up at the sound of the washer changing gears. I'll get to do all my own dishes. I'll have the mailbox removed and start using a p.o. box. I will inherit all cleaning responsibilities. Maybe it is time, as S. said, for me to be alone with God. To clear away some of the distractions. Kick some of the addictions. Figure out what takes the place of Jesus in my life. Yep, the season of housemates is over. I look at the horizon two weeks away and wonder what's coming down the road.

And I wonder why that dream last night was full of me saying, in dreamlike fashion, 'I'm going to be married in two days.' I'm not close to that.

Again

What's In A Name

Quote, Overheard on the Beach

Oh geez, I just spilled beer all over my Al-Anon book. Wait 'til I tell my sponsor.