Springful

Today is the first day I am drawn to write in a long time.
The occasion is also marked by an uncanny freshness that I also likely will not experience for a long time. The end of a hard term followed by the last song of a Spring break that both broke and healed.

Such is an inspiration to write.

Though Spring began a week ago, I had an unexpectedly difficult Spring Break that only just now made me realize Spring. Awkward and difficult as it was, Florida stood to be a delightful opportunity to practice what little grace I have learned, and teach me what still I am struggling with.
Idolatry and pride still loom, I apologize. They were woven into my more "matured understanding of God" and I forgot. I grew complacent, and faced the fallible willpower of me against what real love might teach.

What happened? A season of my life ended, and I mourned it far from home and far from familiar comforts. My faith was shaken, and I realized that as much as I thought I had progressed in understanding Christ, I felt all the way through my heart that much of the faith was being put into another person, and I fell.

What got me through was not my will to be a better person. If anything, trying to be the bigger man in the matter was the worst of it. My willpower had already failed me when I refused to release my expectations of the visit. Those expectations are what spiraled me away from really listening. I would have been lying to say that I was under control. I was not under control.
I was carried away, and given time to be quiet. To talk. To drink. To think. To write.

I am a torn blanket again, cleaning out the bad stitching, hot metal, and broken spiritual bones primed to be set, hit, knit a second time, much in the way I encountered in Ireland, far from home.

Walking away from God, I dwelled in Netflix, round words, and finally trekked through an old high school story written only through old love letters.
One that I hadn't really healed from.
Or moved on.
One that I kind of held to.
I was reminded of how I was, where I had come from. The old love letters from my past relationship spoke to my ego, sure, but it inspired my passion and imagination. I remembered what it was like to be throat-deep in romance and youthful grandeur. I remembered the struggle of disillusionment. I remembered what it was like to think there was nobody else but her.
I saw myself through the lens of someone I connected with and made a commitment to a long time ago. Writing, words, letters, anxieties, joys, lows, highs all were suddenly fresh. So unfamiliar.
So I wrote twelve-something pages of old romantic words mixed with my newly adopted Christian mantras that I so cling to, in hopes to keep to the road God means for me, to shed these old skins in pursuit of new cells.
I wrote to shed, I wrote to grow, to forgive, to move on, but to move forward. I wrote to heal, to finish a clean break, to drill the cavity, to fill it again.
I wrote.

So I'm back in my room again, finally just with God.
I remembered a book my grandma gave me for Christmas:

On the Shoulders of Hobbits

It's an explorative study of God and virtue in the epics set in Middle Earth and Narnia.
I read a few chapters.
The book isn't of high merit or particularly scholarly. I'd spent time reading other speculative or academic books that offer a more personal perspective on scripture and been satisfied and not satisfied.
What was different about the author of Hobbits, what brought me to a fresh spring-feeling about God, is the author's love for both novelists, stories, narratives, characters, and worlds, and how he finds God's love there, deep in the imagination of wizards and talking trees and mountains.

What touched me was his wonder at the worlds.
I'd forgotten what it was like to wonder about fantastic places and stories and good characters.
I've existed outside of such things, between maintaining relationships and reading scripture,
I'd forgotten the value of wonder.

And now, uniquely hot from heartbreak,
[which I celebrate! Grief shed is my stamp of the genuine love we swam in over letters and phones]
I find myself delightfully vulnerable in welding my old joy (grown tired, hurt, and dismayed in the past week) in the pursuit and love of God deep into this rediscovery of stories.
The rediscovery of stories.
Of fantasy.
Of imagination.
Of narrative.
Of wonder and whimsy and joy beyond our bounds!

At the top of a new term, my skin warm from the lingering of spring break's last sunset,
I find peace in remembering stories, this medium by which to discover and share God's love amidst studies, apartments, cars, keys, and yaw.

An answered prayer.

I'm going to protect and grow my imagination again.
This time, with a greater understanding of its purpose in understanding life better through my pursuit of love, these things greater than me.
As I find peace, and I offer it to you.

To a younger Riley

Not by much, but I saw you saying this about something you said once,
I wrote the first part like four months ago.
Then the rest would've been sixteen months ago.
and I wanted to share it with everyone...


"So, I wrote this bit a year ago, probably on a sleepless-distracted night much like this one. Reading it over, I find that even though a lot has changed over the last year, pretty much all of it still rings true.

'See, I'm spread between a newspaper job, friends, writing letters, calling home, passing classes, sleeping enough, eating well (enough), editing videos, filming videos, documenting my life (this?), and pursuing a relationship with my spiritual life. It's a lot. Most days, I don't feel like I'm focusing on any one thing. It's as if I'm just piddling about in the pursuit of a college degree so I have my sea legs once I shove off for the new land (ah, the mysteries of the future).

The catch then becomes, in my piddling, I feel unfounded in the pursuit of any one of those aspects of my life. Because I am unfounded in any one of those pursuits, I cannot make significant growth towards any one of my pursuits, and as such, have nothing in-depth to write about besides the aforementioned piddle practice that I'm becoming so proficient with."

To this, Riley, I say, 
It will become clear.
You will
Make your decision and be willing to commit.
Yes, commitment is the death of possibility,
I know that's what you're afraid of. 
I heard you say it every night.
And you know what's coming next.

What is the value of money if you never spend it?
What is the value of all those choices if you never choose anything?
You're worrying that they'll all slip away,
or worse yet, you'll choose the wrong one.
And that worry is just making more noise
You're afraid of regret just as much as life passing you by.

But you're missing the point.
You can grow even from the wrong choices.
They can make you stronger.
Be thoughtful
But this worrying
(that still hasn't gone all the way away)
Will quiet 
with focus.

You will find hope for peace once your piddling brings you to God.
At least for as long as you allow.
That's the cool thing about choices.
You don't HAVE to do anything.
Except die. And pay taxes.
But
God will bring you all those things you're really looking for.
He's started to already.
Even amidst all of the changes.
And He'll let you DO all of those things you want, in addition to giving you that satisfaction.
Only without your pride.
Your pride.
Is awful.

Keep forgetting it.
Focus on love.

The ideas surrounding this God person will give you hope in finding 
something lasting long enough to matter
In filling yourself with
Love
for everyone around you
Bringing all the love you were given back to the world.
And it won't be for you, either,
It won't be some proud march,
Conquest,
Mission,
Goal,
No, it will be God's.

This will give you purpose
Focus

Your values will become clearer,
You'll learn how to stand on a desk.

Old Romance

Today, I wrote four letters.

So I leave an open letter here
on my desk
for you.

+Riley


___________________________________________________

I leave for Ireland soon.

The feeling is akin to dreams and dawn paralleling. First, I see small coincidences, then stitches together and on the day I leave, a release of webbing and knots into the day when I wake up there.

I am not packed yet. I am home, and I’m full of slipping fingers. This premature longing for the past has me anxious in my clicking skin.

How will I grow beyond tourism and local pubs? How will I live? What will I take home? What worries and fears are waiting for me?

I hear the tapping of tomorrow. Excitement, impatience, all in spite of today’s air in my lungs. My heart goes. I keep filling it with noise. I’m drowning my tight throat in Netflix. Eyes open, hands cupped at the sides of my head and the glass is dark, still, quiet, beating.

The trip has kept my cards close to my chest. I’ve come away with what I need to keep upright, by the counting that my worry did in the thick of semesters and grades. Those efforts must now be worth what energy they were given.

There is joy here, and it is warm. Do not watch my joy, in envy. Do not let me be proud of my works. They are not mine. This was given to me, just as everything has been. Allow me to love you and bring you kindling for your own fires while I am here, as I try to understand how to bring the same for myself.

I bring you these, my prayers for you. My whispers of joy and little reminders, victories, hopes. Let my heart be generous because of such blessings among us.

Dearest perfect shine.

To Wonder

I met God in Ireland.

It started with a really selfish journey.
To my parents, I am sorry for what I put you through. I'm still growing.

I got bored with adulthood and America and wanted to reignite the wonder I found so easily as a kid. From chocolate cake to trees, then cars and warmth and toys and television and computers and presents and birthdays and Christmas trees and the internet and music and new clothes and electronics and women and sex and porn and video games and attention and pride and accomplishment and promise and new new new new, and good stories and thrills and driving fast and food and being young and having free time and using free time and giving everyone attention and being a good person and seizing the day and good poems and writing good poems and being accomplished and loved and INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL TO IRELAND all of it gave me rest and joy and peace and eventually disappointed me.
I kept looking and climbing to higher peaks and finding more peaks
And I found no lasting satisfaction
Not even in these rolling hills abroad.
No lasting peace
and suddenly

God.

Intensely.
Then doubts.
In Ireland, I faced those doubts.
I stayed in, I studied a lot. I read a lot. I listened and watched. I had meals with my roommates and I loved them and the basket of other friends I made. I asked and wondered and doubted.
For the first time, without obligation or pride or bigotry,  (Well, it's really hard to say all of those were absent, but my view was less clouded)
I fell in love.





I've long debated
switching the track of my blog here.
Or at least inviting God by name.
Or by so many names.

There's a certain vocabulary that the church draws from. It's big and wide and powerful and flowery and it freaks me out. I've began to see past the (arguably exclusive) language and hear the stories. The new understanding of love that is suggested in these stories has given me so much more purpose and wonder and rest.

Rest.

I want to explore this new wonder.

My settlement, then, is not to preach (except I'm really bad about that because I love to preach),
but instead to share doubts, theories, ideas, interpretations, misunderstandings, questions, all in pursuit of understanding.

I resolve then
To wonder.

These Rolling Hills

I think I'm still in shock about it all.
I can't tell.
In spite of it, I raise a glass.

This is a toast to the emotional river that came with seeing friends go.
A toast to the river I've ignored and fought and dammed up.



Let's keep this simple, though.
I want a conclusion.

Here's my conclusion, saying goodbye to Ireland was difficult. I certainly finished all my business there and am ready to catch up with America. I'm ready to see what I'm capable of now, back on my home turf. I'm excited to see what dreams come to me next, now that I've tied a bow on this chapter.
I will say again that Ireland will never leave me.

I cannot tie it up in a bundle and move on, which is good because I do not want to move on from Ireland. As soon as the proper inspiration hits me, I'm confident that I would gladly get a tattoo, not for Ireland,

But to remind me of all the hope I found in the world.
I laughed with people from all over the world.
We ate together. We all brought everything we knew about family into one place, and we made a home in the little time we had.

I will never be able to sit on this blog and tell the whole story like I want to, as a narrator. Little things will continue remind us of the little things we forget.


Re-integration is difficult. Nobody wants to hear about it as much as you think they would.
I have a bunch of really good posts just sitting in my computer. I wrote them late at night in all of my worst states. There's so much more beyond those that I could never share right enough.

They warned us about that part. How people won't want to hear about everything. So, I'm not too disappointed. Stories fall out of me sometimes. I anticipate we will spend the rest of our lives recounting everything that happened.

I conclude, finally, with the words of my closest neighbor from my travels, and wish you all a good night,

"we walk around in ireland. study and travel. so many impressions are had and all of a sudden you're pushed back into the old structures. you find yourself in the same old spot and you fulfill your roles as if nothing happened. questions turn around how it's to be back, not what it was like away - or just briefly - and then you're back to old. which is nice too."