Follow the Leader

{My brother and I, goofing off in the food prep room and studying intelligent things involving lots of numbers}

"We have slipped into an adventure of our own unmaking. We play the game of our lives, indeed, the game of life. And it is meant to be played by exuberant, daring, and fun-loving amateurs."

~Terry Lindvall

This is one of my favorite quotes right now. An adventure of my own unmaking- life, this month, this weekend, today- is an adventure. One that I could not create.

Conference. Cupcakes. Coffee. Need I say more? These three words sum up the last two days, though I suppose you could throw in a heavy dose of Pascal and his lovely triangle and call it good.

I don't really know where to lead smoothly into my idea, so I'm just going to jump right in. Call it a sugar rush, if you like. (Or possibly a crash).

Have you ever played follow the leader?

Let's call that transition a crash...

It's the game every kid plays to make dull walks exciting and every teacher plays to get their students to do what they want. Me? I hadn't played in years, but I wasn't facing another ten minute walk back to the dorms in awkward silence, so I turned around to my girls and said, "Ok, we're going to play Follow the Leader!"

The stares I got were incredible:

"What. "

"I've never played follow the leader...."

"In front of the cafeteria?- In front of all these people??"

"Um, yes. It'll be fun!" I'm not sure my enthusiasm for the game carried over. Regardless, the ten minute walk became more of a 15-minute hop-skip-twirl-fly-like-a-plane jaunt. I'm sure it made quite a funny picture: 13 girls weaving and winding through 100 other people, the movements of the leader slowly disintegrating into bent-over giggles by person 9. No one in the back could really tell what the leader was doing, so we just sort of made it up and stumbled along.

Now making it up and stumbling along in game of Follow the Leader is all fine and good, but what about in real life? Really, if you think about it, life is a game of Follow the Leader. As a follower of Christ, I am supposed to imitate Him perfectly. Just as if I was in a line and the leader was pretending to fly, I would pretend to fly. As I end up 1 person back, 2, 3, 4, 5, I start to lose sight. Movement is slower and sloppier and, towards the end, isn't much like imitation at all.

I heard one conference session this weekend, but the illustration of us as believers Following the Leader- Following Christ- stuck with me. So I come back to my quote: life is an adventure. My life is an adventure of Christ's making.

Exuberant.

Daring.

Fun-loving.

Amateur.

I love these words! They're full of life and color and wonder and grace. We can dare to follow Christ, knowing He provides the grace for us to do so. And as His children, we are commanded to be like Him. It takes exuberance, because sometimes imitation is on the very bottom of our to-do list. Exuberance is defined as abounding in vigor, and following is vigorous work. Fun- loving? Yes, because there are too many surprising twists and turns along the way that I am convinced would sometimes shatter the soul if it were not for the gift of laughter. And because life abundant is a gift of grace to rejoice in! Finally, amateur. This is my favorite. This is grace. We were not chosen for our excellent skills of mimicry. For if it were so, we might as well just do it on our own thank-you-very-much. We were chosen because we were bad followers. Horrible, actually, because we weren't even following- we were running the other way!

Here I am then, full of hope and amateurishly living life and loving it in in a way I hope can point only to Christ. I've tried not following. Not aggressively turning around and running the other way of course, but passively. Slipping behind one person and another until I lose sight. Following doesn't come easy. It doesn't come in a happy cup of feel-good tea alongside a cupcake and sunshine and roses. Sometimes it does. A lot of times, though, it comes with vigor.

It comes with a hard days work where you purposed to wake up on time to get things done.

It comes with setting aside time to learn how to follow.

It comes with an investing attitude- choosing to invest time wisely, choosing to invest in people.

It comes with exuberance and crazy-fun and sleepy-happy and one humongous dose of amateur.

{Hooray for conference, coffee, and cupcakes!!}

Confetti from the Sky

I'm in denial that it's already October. I'm in denial that my mind is currently living in November, and that an entire month became booked in the space of a weekend. There it is though, disintegrating planner and all.

Funny thing though- as full-speed-ahead as life is right now-, I'm oddly detached from it. Not detached from it in a negative sense at all, but a sort of transcendence beyond the chaos. The sort of feeling that comes from the realization that being caught up in all the 'to-do's would just about drown you, and so you just live in the grace for the moment. Not in the grace for tomorrow's 6 am to 11 pm schedule (you don't have that yet), not in the grace for the homework project tonight (because it's only 2 pm), not in grace for anything 4 years down the road (especially since you don't even know where you'll be!)- no, just grace for today. For right now.

It's scrawled on my wrist, 'grace for today,' to fight the constant desire to know- to know more or less how my entire life will work out.

That's ridiculous.

It was phrased once that God doesn't burden us with knowing His exact path in life for us. He has one, for sure, and He's told all I need to know: His will is for me to know Him. To know and love and glorify. So there it is, the grey ink reminding me to not fret about tomorrow. Reminding me to enjoy this moment for all the wonder it holds.

The other night we were reading Jonathon Edwards after dinner. He was talking about time, about our lives, and how, when we stand before God and look back at all we've done, what will we tell Him?

Time. It goes too fast. Here though, I'm going to take that back. Because time goes exactly the speed God wants it to. Isn't it my own flurry of activity and rush letting time slip through tired hands? My own sin filling it with things better left undone? My own in-attention causing me to wonder where it went?

Confetti came from the sky today. Multitudes of clouds un-furled sheets of iridescent, symphonic rain. Earthy, spicy-I could almost taste the clean in the air. A new season was ushered in as stacatto downpours peppered students mad-cap dashing for their classes. There was an awe and wonder in it all. The newness of the rain that caused a few to set aside textbooks and lean against the doorframe, forgetting the dates and names of history tests to revel in the rain. Grace came in the rain.

Those are my 10-to-11 musings. My hopes to stand before God and not have tell Him I missed my life because it went too fast. My prayer to seek grace in the right-now and not always be tripping and falling my way into tomorrow, scrambling for what I can't have yet.

" ...if you listen real close, you can hear them whisper their legacy to you. Go on, lean in. Listen, you hear it? - - Carpe - - hear it? - - Carpe, carpe diem, seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary." John Keating Dead Poets Society

Quiddity

Quiddity: it's my new favorite word.

{ quid-di-ty: (noun) whatever makes something the type that it is: essence }

The Quiddity of Life

Coffee shop voices: the hum of the espresso machine, the chime of coffee mugs, murmers of conversations- drown out the sound of my typing. Cracks climb the creamy wall and my mind climbs out the window into the sunshine and lull of Berkeley in the early afternoon. Thoughts leave my fingers and find completion within a word, a sentence, a paragraph.

Leaving the House:

"Are you ready yet?" keys rattle at my door, an expectant face behind them.

"It's not 1:15," I reply under an avalanche of shoes.

"No, really, it's time to go!" Urgency

"No, really, it's not!" Found the shoes.

"I'm in the ca-aaar." door slams as he drags out his words. He likes to be early.

7:55 AM: Quiet. Gray sky, gray cement. Hushed and sleepy faces. Gray carpet, gray desk. Soft thumps of textbooks on desks. Coffee mugs raised as pillars on each desktop. Voices barely raised. People barely awake.

By the Kitchen Counter: It's one of my favorite places- leaning against the cool edge, my body eased awake by the ice of the tile floor and the steam curling from the battered Little Mermaid mug in my hands. Standing by it, confirming my belief that folding melted chocolate into pretty much anything is one of the most wonderful things in the world. Wiping it down, clean and silky once the remnants of 3 sleepytime teas are gone.

Maps:

"It's easy. I looked at the map," Malcolm looks at me, waiting for a response.

"That's nice."

"Ok, so," his hand waves aimlessly out the window, sunglasses cover his eyes as he coolly explains a massive web of directions. "Didn't you look at the map- see, the roads converge like this, see" he bumps my arm and makes a weird fish-like shape with his hands. No. I don't see.

"No, I didn't look at the map." I hate maps.

"How did you not look at a map? Didn't you get directions? How did you get the directions??" To describe his tone as shocked is an understatement. Apparently, looking at maps is as normal an activity for him as, say, eating.

"I got them from google maps. Like I always do."

"Right, you looked at a map!"

"No. I looked at the written directions next to the map." I win. Or not. He sighed loudly, I'm sure ashamed at my ineptness when it came to maps.

Books: Stacks and stacks and stacks. On the bed, under the bed, by the bed. Textbooks dishelved across two shelves. Everything else arranged by color. Pages wrinkly from water- summers spent by the pool and the ocean; fairytale after fairytale bound with childhood magic; battered second-hand Shakespeare, smudged with late Friday night scribbles and chocolate; black mysteries tinged on the edges from coffee- they couldn't be put down, no matter how late. So many stories helping to make mine.

Night: Microwave beeps. The milk is foaming and bubbly. "What did he say?" I shout from the kitchen, peering through to the tv. 4 of us occupying 2 couches along with pillows and blankets and cats. "Did they really just do that? Really?"

"SHHHH." Dad doesn't like commentary. Clattering: Malcolm finds the ice cream. "SHHHH" from the rest of us. Somehow he has managed to reach the decibel of "elephant herd" while getting his dessert. He's gifted. 10:00 pm. Dad pronounces it midnight. Some retreat to sleep. Me? Balanced book and mug and cat on my lap. Only 100 more pages. Empty mug now on the window sill, Big Dipper twinkling behind it. The silence of sleep. Glow of lamplight. Page turns. Outside reaches a hazy color only achieved at 11. Goodnight.

{ quid-di-ty: (noun) whatever makes something the type that it is: essence }

The Good I've Got

Sunday night I set my alarm for 5:20. 5:20. Usually any alarm set before 6 means I get to do something exciting, such as going to the airport. But today it meant I was going to the gym. Black- deep, dark, thick- was the first thing I saw. The next thing was Malcolm’s face telling me he was going back to bed instead of suffering along with me at the gym. Just as a little background: I've never been to a gym before. Most the stuff in there looks pretty similar to what I imagine the Spanish Inquisition may have used- and all I’ve ever seen of treadmills are the YouTube videos of people falling off of them. At 5:30 in the morning, I was pretty sure that was destined to be me. I got through it without incident, however, and 2 hours later I was in the car arguing with Malcolm over whether or not it was a viable option to listen to Pink before 8 am. I (barely) made it through U.S. History, escaped to Sweetie Pies for café au lait, and made it back in time to find a spot in the madhouse known as the NVC parking lot before Theatre 100. Lunch break. Homework. Read. Email. Class. Home. Breathe.

Bright- not the soft buttery light bright, but a hot, white blaze- rivaled with my alarm this morning. Today I don’t have to go to class. Today is an everything day. Homework-clean-errands-read-write-everything day.

Wednesday: Monday’s twin.

Thursday: another Everything day.

Friday: Happy-Weekend(!) day.

In the great scheme of things, most of my time is filled with pretty normal stuff: classes, homework, essays, conversations, losing paperwork, driving, novels, writing. Mundane.

Is it really, though- mundane? I’m not so sure I want to confine life under the constrains of those powerful 7 letters. As soon as any day-in-day-out becomes labeled ‘mundane’ it tends to remain there. And before I know it, whole slices of time are lost in the whirlpool of ‘everyday life’ and forgotten. Gone, with only the thrilling left to occupy. And when the thrilling becomes dull? Time is rushed- rushed for the next big thing, rushed to finish what doesn’t seem to count anymore, rushed and gone. Never to be seen again.

I haven't decided if then I should seek the extraordinary in the ordinary, or merely take joy in the mundane things. Maybe both. Either way, I never want today- or any day for that matter- to remain just another day.

Mondays, then- instead of treadmills and driving to school and wasting away in History class- hold the beauty of a black sky and the stillness before the world wakes up; bring the laughter that comes when Malcolm gives me his logic for driving around with a dead black rose on our dash; inspire thankfulness for the means to go to school.

" 'You could send your soul after the good you had expected, instead of turning it to the good you had got. You could refuse the real good; you could make the real fruit taste insipid by thinking of the other' " (Perelandra)

* http://hannah-tomorrowisamondaymorning.blogspot.com/p/1000.html *

Life at the Moment

{2 of the crazy people living in my house right now}

I am thankful for cream + sugar+ egg yolks+ cornstarch because together they make custard.

And there's nothing more wonderful than watching melted chocolate ravenously engulf silky cream custard as they slowly become one rich and wonderful entity.

I am thankful for leftovers. For the 4 leftover shortbread pieces that give mom and me an excuse to brew tea and sit down and watch E.R. We haven't done that in awhile.

I am thankful for laundry. For a washer and dryer that function as they are supposed to. For the assurance my clothing will not be swimming in a soupy mess of un-drained water when I go to dry it.

On the other hand I am thankful for the washing machine that never drained. Because though it left me with soggy clothes and $1.50 less, it also left me with a happy memory of being doubled over with laughter- if it weren't for nebulous laundry rooms and equipment, laundry parties would be so much less fun.

I am thankful for having to figure out how to share a gas tank with my little brother. I'm glad I have a little brother to share it with.

I am thankful for gray mornings with pearly light.

I am thankful for the very last cup of black coffee. For every drop of bittersweet and warm. For the line of my favorite mugs on my windowsill that represent night hours spent writing and lazy mornings spent doing nothing much.

I am thankful for friends that live far away and for spontaneous Skypes.

I am thankful for friends that live 5 min. away who have a mutual love of strawberries and awkward symbols and who are not-so-great at Rock Band but rock "Walking on Sunshine" like we composed it.

I am thankful for the 5 crazy boys { My 2 little brothers and 3 who think they are }who have practically lived here the past 2 weeks, drinking all the coffee and taking up all the couch space and filling all the silence.

I am thankful to be rooted and grounded in the Solid Rock, and so to be able to offer thanks.

Tonight I thought a lot about tomatoes. Tomatoes.

I was making the salad tonight, pretty much like any other night. First of all, let me just make it clear how happy I am 'salad' no longer means iceberg lettuce,watery tomatoes and weird croutons drowning in honey mustard just to make it taste. Other than that, there's nothing much exciting about making salad. There I was, cutting up cherry tomatoes and musing over what generally disagreeable things they were. To start, the tomato plants harbor the mother of all Godzilla-like spiders. This alone is enough to persuade me to relinquish tomatoes. And then they taste weird. In spite of all these detractors, God could have made every single tomato the same shade of red.

Really.

If you stop to think about it, there's no reason for tomatoes to be anything other than red. There's no reason for them to have color at all. But as I cut them up and tossed them on the salad, I couldn't help but thank God for color. For the tiny jewels bleeding saffron and the ruby-red half moons cresting over the tops of the romaine leafs, for the sunset coloring that pervaded a dingy cutting board, making it beautiful.

I'm still wondering why I thought so much about a fruit I don't even like.

"Count your blessings" goes the old saying.

Some days blessings are brilliant neon signs in the middle of your life. Most days, though, they're brilliant and tiny tomatoes causing me to give thanks.

Coffee and Cinnamon Rolls

As much as I abhor airports, I've found some of my best memories are made in them. Saturday morning all of the staff packed up in the vans one last time to head off to Philadelphia International Airport and then home. For the most part I held up some sense of put-togetherness on the 45 min. trip there, and then promptly began to lose it as we pulled up to the terminals. 2 hours of sleep were a lovely thing to blame for the absolute puddle of tears I became, but in all truth I had just been hit with the realization of how much everyone I was saying goodbye to had become a part of my life. Goodbyes are messy and wet and mostly incoherent (at least on my part) when exchanged between dear friends. In the midst of all the hugging and sobbing, though, there was something beautiful. As cheesy as it may sound, our summer ending and all the heart-wrenching goodbyes it entailed was the result of a love that goes beyond understanding.

It would make sense that in over the course of 8 weeks, spending 24/7 with each other and sharing almost everything, people would come together. It just happens naturally. What made the difference, though, was that these people were "the excellent ones" (Ps. 16:3) who were made that way by Christ because it delighted Him to do so. Every Sunday night at t-time (a time where students are able to chill and consume copious amounts of Cheez-Its while debriefing the day), I told my girls that. I followed with the challenge to treat those around them as excellent and to delight in them as Christ did- because the knowledge of Christ choosing to make us excellent beings and to delight in us in order to please Himself should so thrill and draw our souls to loving Him that all our love spills over on to others. Here then, I find the love that passes understanding. Christ's love was filling each of us as staff, and so was poured out among our team. We loved each other with a love not our own as we saw Christ being manifested in each other.

I come back to goodbyes. Several hours after the team had divided among numerous airlines and had been separated by the 'wailing wall'( as Lydia aptly dubbed the obnoxious glass wall between us and security), Lydia and I sat in the Phoenix airport waiting for her flight. We had come off our first flight exhausted and eager for coffee. Cinnabon was the closest thing to her gate, so she came up to me as I stood with our bags and said "Let's have coffee and cinnamon rolls." Those 15 minutes in that dingy airport with mediocre coffee hold one of my favorite memories of the summer: to sit with one of my dearest friends and share the joy of completing a good summer- fully knowing its goodness and simultaneously its time to end- was total joy and satisfaction. Even in saying goodbye and joking about joining her in Idaho just so I wouldn't have to do that anymore, it was wonderful to know our relationship went beyond camp and summer and distance.

So here I sit in my bed with my cat, happy and content. Being home is good. Hopefully over the next couple weeks I'll be able to share some of my stories and thoughts from the summer, but for now- bed, because sleep is also good. Very good.