Overflow

I'm not sure how much I've learned in the month, almost two, that I've been back in Atlanta. I've come a long way from being a thinking man within a few short years. This is now simply this, not this and that. I've learned my yes ma'am's and no ma'am's, but I admit I still do find it hard to straighten that back, stand tall, and look you dead-on in the eye when you're talking to me. Just understand this: life continues to open up into a brilliance of complexity that I find inexhaustibly beautiful--ever reforming, ever renewing.

Even for almost forty thousand dollars a year, I still can't tell you much about marginal costs and optimal choices, about the ins and outs of this city, about the dozens of Chinese characters I cram inside my head every day, about what's on CNN, about girls, about loving and caring for people. But hell, I'd like to think I'm making progress.

I've been up and down the coast, back and across the country like a small piece on a game board. Many people have moved out of my life, but God has brought in many more. Circumstances continue to change with unreal fluidity, and I get the distant sense that I'm getting shunted into the limelight of my own life. Hard as I've tried to test the limits of God's grace, no matter how many mode and moods I've gone through, I'm still here blogging before you, lying on my front, resting in Christ. The peaks and the lows of my short history seem so unimportant and so cloudy and distant. I've been reckoning with love and bitterness, friendship and loneliness, and laughter and tears. And I know there is yet still so much to learn. I've written on my palm, "help me to feel the abundance of Your love and to pass it on others." I hope it doesn't wash off too quickly.

I can see out my window at the neighboring apartments, and whereas two minutes ago, where there were still a few lonely windows lighted, they've all clicked off by now. I still have scores of strands of broken thoughts and incomplete sentences stretching and sprawling through my mind, but I think it's time to be a man and call it quits. I recall something someone wrote in their blog a long time ago. I think it was Robin, and her words went like this: "and I am but the smallest of saints..." And so this I say: keep me in your prayers, as I would love to keep you in mine. I hope to talk to you all soon. This is one small saint signing out for tonight.

De Novo

The lawyer next door is having a heated shouting match with his phone, and it's good for neither the vibrations of the building, nor my digestion. I have my own office, but I hardly need it. It's still cluttered with the possessions of previous owners, and my desk is worn with the scuff marks of abuse. Eruptions of what sound very much like the pounding of tables and repeated declarations of "we're going to trial" keep issuing through the walls. The secretaries, researchers, and paralegals are careful to tread softly around the office on days like these.

Morale and energy I do not possess, but stationery I have in great troves of unwonted abundance. I could probably fund all the paper clipping, stapling, and writing efforts of a small country of secretaries and authors. I've got to admit that with each new folder I open, and every trip I make to and fro the copy room, my face fills with mounting despair. So next week I'm going to start working in both downtown and Westlake, splitting my hours between paid drudgery and unpaid edification. But my dress pants are tight, the professionalism is a bit uneasy, and I find that I really haven't the audacity to uphold the law of the letter.

Just Beyond

I've never liked rain. But tonight I sleep to its soft beat against the window panes. And I feel easy. Well, there goes the fatty thunder. You never miss that. Atlanta is usually overcast, and on those days the grey looms for as far as the eye can see. But if you wait, you'll get something special. On some days you can hear the individual patter of each drop. Lightweight rain, whose wispy senders take a backseat to the scene because the sun didn't go away when it was supposed to. On those days you can see a hazy red sunset hanging lazily from the lower sky like a portrait--watching you like a cat that's not likely to go anywhere anytime soon. And it's the strangest sensation watching rain fall from the sun. On those days the roads are slick and you drive into paradise on shimmering dust. The good, the bad, and the ugly are definitely one.

The Day Before Tomorrow

"After the torchlight red on sweaty faces

After the frosty silence in the gardens

After the agony in stony places

The shouting and the crying

Prison and place and reverberation

Of thunder of spring over distant mountains

He who was living is now dead

We who were living are now dying"

Spinning Tops

Goodnight, California. My last few days here have been cough-ridden, sleazy, and fairly blank. Something about the bug going around mutes my hearing, and I can't yawn to clear my ears for the life of me. I feel slightly congested as a human. I'm excited about returning. To what exactly, I'm not sure, but it doesn't matter and I depart anyway. It says so on my ticket. So I'm guns blazing to glory and destiny packing a single copy of the century's best essays, the Word of God, and my hiptop. But before I retire, I must return to the idea that it's not about me. So here's a toast of conceptual hope and mutual encouragement to another half academic year sacrificed for God.