unconventional wisdom.

This summer started off at an all-time low. The economy is terrible, did you know? And places where youthful faces usually work are already full of aged adults, suffering from a job downgrade in the recession. You know me, I can be a bit tricky at times, and I don't really want to settle with just some fast food job or-- please-not-again retail. Since the cush office job is not in my cards this summer, and since the 40+ applications that I sent out are not offering a hopeful return...

I'm turning my sticky situation into some memories that will really stick. Odd job extraordinaire, here I come, and I'm not afraid to say it. Five little (big) projects for me to tackle this summer, let's see if I'm really up for the challenge!

Project number one. Tackle the labyrinth of volunteer sites. Who needs to travel to another country when there are PLENTY of opportunities right here? I'm checking it out, and putting it to the test. There are so many sites--one would be simpler, and probably all of their goals would be better reached if they all combined--but I'm going to sift out some golden gems this summer and spend some time getting my hands dirty. Economy, you can keep sinking, but it won't mean that I'll be sitting here watching Samantha Brown on the Travel Channel or dreaming that I was in some far-off country on my very own voluntourism vacation...again. This time, I'm really going to live, here, without taking life for granted (and without spending money on a plane ticket!).

Project number two. Get paid for doing these crazy little things called surveys. Are they legit? Can I actually get money from doing these things, and sit here in my pajamas while making cash? Or is it just a hoax?

Project number three. Start to write. Yes, that's right, write. Begin to submit some pieces to various magazines, newspapers and publishers so that maybe, someday, my dreams will come true (and I'll be able to pay for my education). It's totally nebulous for me, getting published. How do I start? This will be a fun little adventure.

Project number four. Invent something? Travel? Change a life or be changed? Live passionately? Create memories? Learn how to be a better friend, sister, & daughter? DO SOMETHING EXTRAORDINARY. Embrace Whimsy, as Don Miller puts it, or maybe it's just live with a little extra zest. Doable? Absolutely.

Project number five. I'll pray that I leave this summer better than I came. And leave the world around me better, too.

Oh, the dreams that come alive during the midnight hour...it's a beautiful thing. Good, good, good night.

Can we forget finals and just go?

what I learn from Lit Finals

There are two occasions when the sacred beauty of Creation becomes dazzlingly apparent, and they occur together. One is when we feel our mortal insufficiency to the world, and the other is when we feel the world’s mortal insufficiency to us. Augustine says the Lord loves each of us as an only child, and that has to be true. “He will wipe the tears from all faces.” It takes nothing from the loveliness of the verse to say that is exactly what will be required.

Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave—that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm. And therefore, this courage allows us, as the old men said, to make ourselves useful. It allows us to be generous, which is another way of saying exactly the same thing. But that is the pulpit speaking. What have I to leave you but the ruins of old courage, and the lore of old gallantry and hope? Well, as I have said, it is all an ember now, and the good Lord will surely someday breathe it into flame again.

I love the prairie! So often I have seen the dawn come and the light flood over the land and everything turn radiant at once, that word “good” so profoundly affirmed in my soul that I am amazed I should be allowed to witness such a thing. There may have been a more wonderful first moment “when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy,” but for all I know to the contrary, they still do sing and shout, and they certainly might well. Here on the prairie there is nothing to distract attention from the evening and the morning, nothing on the horizon to abbreviate or to delay. Mountains would seem an impertinence from that point of view.

To me it seems rather Christlike to be as unadorned as this place is, as little regarded. I can’t help imagining that you will leave sooner or later, and it’s fine if you have done that, or you mean to do it. This whole town does look like whatever hope becomes after it begins to weary a little, then weary a little more. But hope deferred is still hope. I love this town. I think sometimes of going into the ground her as a last wild gesture of love—I too will smolder away the time until the great and general incandescence.

I’ll pray that you will grow up a brave man in a brave country. I will pray you find a way to be useful.

I’ll pray, and then I’ll sleep.

- Gilead, Marilynne Robinson.

What a beautiful novel. I got stung by a bee today, and I wonder how mom did it, how she plucked those stingers from my squirming little girl body when I was young. I could barely pluck it from myself, and she held me still, when I was fidgeting and crying and angry at the little bee for stinging me. So I called her, and I thanked her, and it was good.

Finals are taking over my life right now. And the funny thing about studying poetry, its that you have lonely lines wandering around your brain, like "the lion is alone, and so am I" or "a thing of beauty is a joy forever" or "Man's love is of man's life a thing apart, / 'T is woman's whole existence;" and then you find yourself thinking in poetry, and you go for a bike ride and along with these lonely lines, you get new words ever popping into your brain, like promontory or uprooted, and you feel like writing a poem, "On Promontories" or something like that, and everything seems more vivid, from the crystal creek flowing ever so swiftly down past the sandy shore, or the white blossom juxtaposed against the furry green undergrowth, or the silky bark of a white oak tree, stretching upwards towards the sky, or even the scent of dead fish along the riverbank and the smell of lilacs o'erbrimmed with ripeness. You hear the annoying gnats buzzing in your ear. And this is what it must be like to be a poet, or to be a writer, you've got all of these words just hitting you like a correspondent breeze, life is more vivid, you've got all of these waves and leaves and clouds and this whole earth just singing with moments of passion, imagination, life, moral teaching, and then you just know. It hits you, and you cannot help but write.