Thankfulness times three.

I miss this blog! Visiting old projects at times is like visiting an old friend. It feels familiar and yet altogether alien.

Tonight I am thankful for many things. Firstly, I am thankful for the time away from this blog, time that I have had to reflect, stare out windows out into the trees, and think of the future. The present. Forcing thankfulness tends to find me overlooking the important things in my life, and instead focusing on the details for the sake of my writing. But my craft is not nearly as important as true appreciation. True appreciation far outweighs even the most poignant excerpts of my vanity.

Secondly, I am thankful for the recent holiday of Thanksgiving. For the first time in my life, perhaps as a sign of my getting older, I spent the holiday alone. Working in Indiana at a coffeeshop, saving for an uncertain future, I questioned how to best spend my time. Eating alone felt wrong. And yet, I have a job. It’s easy for me to forget how much I have to be thankful for sometimes, when I’m focusing on what I don’t have.

Thirdly, I am thankful for the power of transformation. I was talking with a friend the other day about the origins of Thanksgiving. My friend was ashamed of the holiday because it reminded her of the genocide Native Americans faced at the hands of early American settlers. Between that and the celebration of gluttony, the two of us questioned the holiday. I left my conversation with her disgusted at the thought of Turkey, thankful that I would be celebrating alone. And yet, later that day on the way to work, I passed a small house in an Indiana cornfield. A quaint, broken down shack of a residence, I think one of the windows were broken. And yet, I counted eleven cars and saw eons of light gleaming contentedly from the abode. I was struck by how a holiday, regardless of origin, could be transformed into something redemptive and beautiful. How even the darkest of things could bring families and loved ones together. It made me smile, and made the thought of working nine hundred miles from home a bit easier to swallow.

Thankfulness is everywhere. I look forward to the rest of the year, and where it takes me. What are you thankful for?

 

There’s always a little Rumi for improvement.

I am thankful because today is a day without deadlines, without priorities, without clear and precise guidelines. This is not to say that any day has them, necessarily.

I woke up early today and slowly rolled out of bed. I ate a hearty, un-heart-friendly breakfast, and proceeded to walk along the campus, watching the sun rise between the trees, thrusting rays between branches.

I took a shower, enjoyed the warm water, and thought of cleansing. Both physical and otherwise. Of cares of the week before, of busy-ness. There’s something renewing about the feeling of the worries and troubles of everything past rising up out of your skin before being brushed away.

I ran my fingers up and down the neck of my banjo. I heard the chords and notes resonate off into the distance, bouncing off the walls of the dimly lit room, only brightened by the sunlight pouring through the windows to the outside world. I laughed at my inability to play in a technically sound manner.

I talked to people. Made silly jokes with my roommate, made silly jokes with friends hundreds of miles away. There aren’t enough silly jokes in the world, I think we’re all a little too uptight sometimes. Our desire to control what is beyond our control does that sometimes.

Now, I’m staring out a window again.

Well, two windows. Maybe three.

My laptop screen, the window into an artificial world, a world of zeros and ones.

The window to my right, where the sun resonates, but from a different angle than it did hours past. Shadows trace buildings, grass, cornfields, cars.

And the window into the soul, of the poetry I’ve been reading all afternoon.

I drink my coffee slowly, exhaling so that it rises up against my face, fogging my glasses. Most times, I sip my coffee as though it were water. But today I focus on making the most of each moment.

I read somewhere not too long ago that stillness is more difficult than busy-ness. It requires concentration, endurance. And today, in the absence of “goals” and “tasks”, I focused instead not on loneliness, or creating diversions, but rather soaking up this fine day.

Today, I am thankful for relishing. For peace. For humbly strolling, and the renewing, the energy that comes from that. Amen.

…for breathlessness!

I started blogging a couple of weeks ago refreshed, renewed. And then I started summer school. And then my efforts at work became more involved. And then I started doing writing gigs. And going to concerts. And visiting friends. And writing letters. And even extra things, things that I’m not entirely sure that I’m capable of, like long-distance research efforts with professors.

I’m swamped right now. I think today is the first time I’ve logged on this blog for several weeks. A couple of weeks ago, I drove along to work in a rather positive demeanor. Now, I spend my mornings cursing at the sky because I’m running late, and I spend my evenings cursing at the ceiling because I’m rushing to get my paperwork done.

“I wake up later every day,” I tell my dad. He tells me to stop thinking so negatively, to think positive thoughts. I look at my breakfast, and tell him that I can’t eat eggs every day, because I need to be healthy. I tell him to look closer at the numbers for paying for school this fall. I tell him that he’s too optimistic. I tell him that I probably won’t be able to make it to the coffee shop on time before I go to class because it’s late. I’m talking, and talking, and talking.

Now that it’s the end of the day, and I’m at my computer, screen folded out, keyboard in front of me, papers strewn across a desk. I can’t think. The first thing I want to do is put on a record and stare at the wall. I want to complain to my friends about my busy existence. I want to do fun things. I want to tell them how it’s not fair to commute daily to a college town where I have no friends. I want to talk about a missed connection that I had with a girl last week, because she looked at me and smiled at me, which obviously means that she was “the one”, whatever the hell that means.

I want to rant to you, reader, whoever you are, wherever you are.

But honestly?

It’s just not worth it. I’m breathless when I talk, and when I write, my fingers grow tired. And all the pulling out of my hair, both figurative and literal, isn’t really worth it. I spend a great deal of energy lamenting over energy lost. It’s all kind of silly, and I’m just now realizing it, now that summer is two-thirds of the way gone. Which, I’m almost ready to lament over that.

This morning, during a meeting with a professor, we were talking about the future. About what life might look like for me after graduation, about what it could look like for me. I was ready to answer his questions with statistics and drawn out plans, when he threw me a complete curveball: he looked at me dead in the eyes, and asked me why I get out of bed in the morning. And if the future I was creating for myself would continue to get me out of bed in the morning.

And I was stunned.

He talked about how he gets out of the bed every morning. “I’m not a religious man,” he said, “But I am thankful every day. Thankfulness is what gets me out of the bed. When I commute all the way to work, I think about the men stories up in the roofs, working underneath the hot sun. They don’t have chairs. I think about that. I think about how if, I want to sit down, I have the privilege to sit down. I am truly a blessed man. Teaching…I certainly don’t do it for the paycheck, but I have enough to get me through.”

At which point I realized that I don’t even know why I get out of bed in the morning. I just do. I get out of bed for the “A”, for the “recommendation”, for the “pat on the back”. But beyond that? I don’t think about it. Not nearly enough. And I think this is why I haven’t been too thankful lately. I’ve been throwing tantrums, both audible and internal, based over how I have no free time anymore.

When all the while, I should be thankful that I have the opportunity to be busy.

It is for this reason, that at least for this evening, that I am thankful. For breathlessness. For being busy beyond orientation. For going to bed late and waking up early. For this opportunity; even if I don’t know where it is taking me.

What are you thankful for today?

…for dancing!

I have family to tend to, so this will be brief.

Last night, I was blessed with the opportunity to be at a wonderful concert in Dallas. The band, Mates of State, are a husband and wife duo. The husband is on the drums, the wife on keyboard. The music was nothing too complex; too profound; or too revolutionary. Simple song structures and sing-along melodies had myself, along with every other person in town under the age of twenty-five, dancing and vocalizing our joy.

All too often I try to derive the deeper meaning of things. I live inside my head and am constantly thinking. Rationalizing, analyzing, and so on. But last night I joined along in the chorus and was simply happy. It felt good to be alive.

Sometimes in life, we need to enjoy ourselves.

I think of King David dancing in the streets, and how everyone around him must have laughed, turned away and thought less of him. I usually am those people. But last night, I experienced a little bit of the joy of, well, being alive.

Today, I am thankful for simplicity. For a respite. For dancing. What are you thankful for?

…for work!

Getting out of bed to go work is hard. There is this moment, well, moments, where I lay in bed and wish that I could bury my face in my pillow and sleep forever. And my alarm keeps going off. I stare at the ceiling fan above me, turning and turning. And I think. About responsibility, and about what lays for me beyond that bed.

Honestly, at the point I’m mostly thinking about coffee. But that’s not all I think about. I promise.

The morning drive often has at least a slight hint of dread to it. There’s something that’s just not all too invigorating about the thought of working for hours and hours upon end.

But when I finally do arrive to my job, get out of the car and shut the door, thankfulness sets in. Normally, this thankfulness stems from what I get by working. From credit. From money. From appreciation. But also, lately at least, this stems from the opportunity to work. And to have a chance to do work well.

A lot of my coworkers jokingly, or half-jokingly, complain about the boredom that stems from mountains of paperwork. From filing, copying, and memos. It’s fun to join in, because laughter feels good. It makes the glaring fluorescent lights a little more bearable.

One thing that I have tried to do a little differently with this job is to find joy in it through giving my best efforts. Through taking my work seriously. I often feel that I am a few steps away from becoming a Dwight Schrute, but part of what makes that character so funny is that work is not his goal.

There is something satisfying about a job well done. About not cutting corners. It’s tiring, but in the moment of hard work, it gives me a kind of energy. Refreshment. Athletes call this being “in the zone”. I was never much of an athlete, so I don’t really know what “the zone” is, but this is what I’d imagine it to be.

I never really know how to share my faith. Logically, a Christian-sponsored work environment isn’t necessarily the place to evangelize, but I see things every day that defy what I understand to be logical. Many of my coworkers don’t share my beliefs, which is something I’m fine with until they talk about beliefs. In which my mind tells me to vomit the basic Truths of Christianity in fifteen minutes.

That works for some people. But lately I’ve been wondering if silence in of itself is a kind of witness. Be honest with yourself–Christianity, or at least, religious Christianity, isn’t much of a secret in America. Most Westerners have heard of “Jesus”. I believe in Jesus, and I’m proud to believe in Him. But I don’t always believe in His “followers”. I wonder if we Westerners talk too much (in general, but especially about “Jesus”).

What if we witnessed through our actions rather than with our mouths?

A coworker of mine the other day was sharing their “lack of faith”, “agnosticism”, or whatever you’d like to call it. My other coworker rose up and asked question after question, offering basic digestible truths and advice. Watching that advice fall on deaf ears was a lot like watching water bead off of a raincoat.

I guess where I’m going with all this is that work is a kind of witness. And though work is hard in the same way that witnessing is hard, in doing so, we can learn to find joy in it. And this is what I have been doing lately, or at least today, through filing papers and making copies.

Today, I’m thankful for work. What are you thankful for?