Brilliance

It's not often that one gets the opportunity to look sheer brilliance square in the face. I get to experience this quite regularly and I have since grown quite comfortable making my own sandwiches.

Photo Credit Borozinski Photography.

I get to these points. My mind is racing, churning and yearning for reason and truth. I’m tearing through fragments of ideas, as they pour through my fingers like sand back onto the beach. That’s my mind on nights like tonight. A beach full of sand, a man on his hands and knees, combing the ground… hoping to make sense of it all.

There isn’t a lot of sense that’s been made. I’m wrestling with thoughts of beauty and glory, and what Jesus meant when he said “The Kingdom is coming.”

I’ve been making earth-shattering statements all night, thoughts the world has never seen, and brilliant little quips about how we are made and why things are the way they are. As if centuries of questions asked by thousands of brilliant men simply unravel in the face of this new intellectual discovery.

And as quickly as these statements stumble off of my tongue and out of my mouth, they slip between my fingers and back into the beach, a beach filled with chaos, questions, and lots and lots of sand.

Church laughs

I whispered something in Ellie’s ear in church Sunday and she started laughing. She doubled over and covered her mouth and turned red. I started laughing too. We both tried unsuccessfully to stifle the noise. I felt that at any moment Mom would come and separate us.

Moms go to church to make sure that friends don’t sit together. At least that is what I came to believe in my early childhood. It’s not allowed. When friends sit together they laugh together. All good mothers know this.

I wonder when Ellie and I will stop poking and snickering and giggling during church?

Probably once we have kids.

Our kids will have to separate us so that we quit embarrassing them.

Because sitting by friends in church...

its just not allowed.

Undivided Attention

I don’t often feel lonely. Loneliness is a rarity in my life. I am frequently alone, but rarely lonely. I felt it a little last night. Not in the way I would often describe it. Not the way that aches and groans for friendship and love--a lesser amount of loneliness. A bored, dull amount. Boring-dull-lonely. An interesting mix of suck.

I don’t remember feeling this at my last apartment. I know my roommates were gone just as much as the one I have now. I had T.V. and internet there though. Sadly, I feel lonely without it. I would prefer to feel lonely when there is a lack of humans, not a lack of entertainment. As if loneliness was a choice.

I realize that I was lonely at my old apartment, same as now.
I just started thinking more here.

I’m alone with myself more often. Its oddly intimate, being alone. Few people have been by themselves with me as long as I have. I’m alone... with myself... everyday. In the shower, in the car, on the way to Wichita, painting the house.

Sadly, in those times of alone-ness, they’re rarely intimate. They are usually shared with Hollywood or the world wide web. How strange it is, my intimacy with this world. My invitation daily goes out as I turn on the T.V.

Come Hollywood, be alone with me.

I wonder if my fiance has been alone with me as much as Hollywood has? Hollywood had an 18-year head start.

I wish she had the kind of free-flowing access to my mind that Hollywood does. I wish when I heard her voice everything else was drowned out. The way T.V. mutes reality. I wish she could become my reality.

I wish I was zoned into her and captivated by her, the way T.V. can allure me. I’ve seen thousands and thousands of boring infomercials and ridiculous t.v. shows solely because I couldn’t turn away. I wish I could replace those with hundreds of reruns of stories told by my Ellie. I wish she knew that her allure on me, meant that her re-runs were worth watching over, and over, and over. That her bland and seemingly normal information was enough to steal my attention from a giant room filled with voices, sounds, and noise.

“Tell me that story again, tell me about your day. I want to hear your stories, I want them to be my influence; I want them to shape my soul. Your story that is so much greater than Hollywood’s. Its more beautiful, more filling. And it leaves me less empty. It gives shape to my life, rather than melting my soul. Your stories give me hope and joy, rather than eroding my spirit.

You are all I hear in a world full of noise. You are all I see in a room filled with color.

I am captivated by you.

Come into my alone-ness, you have my undivided attention.”

Croquet

I've been into croquet for the last month. Not to be confused with crochet. Its been a good phase. I've made new friends. Or at least made old friends new again. I'm now apart of a club. We play all the time.

Croquet is like a mixture of golf and chess. Except it is cheaper than golf, (free) and more exciting than chess. I lose over and over and over again. I'm not good at golf or chess.

You should join our club.
I need someone that I can beat.

Magic

I wonder if God would take offense if I described his miracles as “magical.”

Examples:

“When the Lord healed that person, it was really magical!”

“Holy Cow! That was some serious God mojo. He’s really working his magic today!”

It seems like the word magic is only reserved for Disney characters, witches, and wizards.

I’ve seen Disney’s wizards, and I say that’s a total waste of the word, “magic.”

Dear Lord, make this disappear.

Historical Rain

This is a post I wrote July 7, 2008, days before I started dating the most beautiful girl I ever met. Ellie Goodvin. (Soon to be Ellie Kriwiel.) I'd say she has inspired everything good that has ever come from me.

I only post this to show that my love for rain is not new, but old.

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Tonight my eyes are really tired but my mind won’t go to sleep. That makes for great writing with no typo’s.

It rained today. The rain was beautiful. It was a slow pitter-patter of a rain, the kind that comes and goes, and only stays for a little while. But when the rain is here the earth is full of quiet humble joy. I imagine the earth playing in the rain, running and splashing and spinning. Drinking in the power and majesty the rain brings. And as the rain passes on to water another part of the earth, my plot of land is left with the quiet chill whispering,

“The rain has been here.”

The trees all huddle closer together as the aroma of damp grass fills the air. It’s a sweet time to have been soaked in the rain.

I love to play in the rain. I love the thunder and lightning of the raging storm to the gentle sprinkle of the evening sunset. I love splashing in puddles, and racing twigs down the gutter-rivers. Rain gives me chills.

I love when it rains.

I love after it rains and my clothes are all soaked and I’m standing there wet and cold as the wind blows over my shivering body. A warmth comes over me that cannot be explained, and my friends, its not because I peed my pants…

Lord, pour out your love tonight like rain. Let it water the gardens of our hearts so that we may be soaked with your love. Clean us like only your cleansing water can.

I pray that when people meet us they will humbly, quietly, whisper,

“The rain has been here”

Welcome

Rain is one of my favorite happenings of nature. It brings life and newness. It refreshes the earth, it refreshes my soul. It often comes in a storm. Clouds, wind, thunder, lightning, The way newness powerfully enters into one’s life. But other times it comes softly, quietly, and it grows and then shrinks only to grow a bit again. It wains in the same way one matures. Quietly and in bursts. I love rain. It brings so much life. This is a place where I wreck like a storm, or pitter patter like a long, spring, rain shower--no matter the downfall in the end; I hope you leave refreshed and with life.

regards.

New Beginnings.

It's good to be back.