The Way of the Force

The way me and my sis have it figured is this: in the first movie, Luke's whiny; in the second, he's just about right; in the third, he's stuffy. Kinda like the three bears. Huh.

But Han's just "eh" in the first movie and in the second, downright--well, basically, if I were Leia I'd take a blaster to him. And then in the third--well, the end of the second and on--he gets some sense and is even kind of sweet. So yeah, I guess if you take it like the righteous man who ends bad vs the bad man who ends righteous, Han's (marginally) better.

Wait, no he's not. He's only sort of sweet for brief moments in the third, and you have to be a bit more grown-up than I am was in high school--when I most loved Star Wars--to appreciate that, and anyway, that's not enough to make up for a lifetime of cocky "I-really-want-you-to-shoot-me"-ness.

Anyway, R2 still wins.

Snow in the Spring

Would you believe me if I told you it snowed today? It did, though. All the trees have been in bloom since Spring Break. Today I walked out to the parking lot behind one of our buildings and all around me tiny white petals were drifting to the ground. The trees were just showering them along the sidewalk and the pavement, like snow. It was amazing.

The Smell of Home

Late Friday night (about 2 am) we pulled into the driveway after a long day on the road. It feels lovely to be on Spring Break, and home. It especially feels lovely to have this warm, humid weather and hear the frogs and the bugs and just the smells and sounds and feel of this place. I've been noticing recently how much smell is a part of my sense of a place--I can't name and can barely identify most of the smells I associate with home and don't think about it much when I'm not here, but when I come back they all come back to greet me like a hundred quietspoken little friends--the smell of the walls and wood and lights and indoors in general, the smell of dust and water and our winds and grasses, and all the others things I can't identify but recognize when I meet them.

Winter back at school had its good points--it was kind of neat to come outside after hours of the internal buzz in my mind and the external buzz of radio, people, whatnot, and hear that crystalline silence. Just the cold air and such a complete silence--practically no cars or people and no breezes so if you shut your mind up and listened it was amazing to hear how complete that silence was and how far it stretched. But I am glad again for the noises of spring and summer--frogs, crickets, night breezes, grass blowing--I even heard an owl a few weeks ago.

Saturday morning, after our long road trip, I even got a welcoming committee--my niece and nephews came and woke me up. I am very impressed with the service around here. From the sound of them before they came in the room it sounded like my niece was giving her brothers a guided tour. "This is where Auntie is."

It's good to be home.

Stuck In the Revolving Door of Your Head..

It's been on my mind to update for a while, so I thought I finally would. I've been doing a lot more thinking and a lot less talking than usual (well...a lot less talking) and it's really not a good combination. I read on someone's profile somewhere online that he spent a lot of time thinking when he was a kid and that consequently he was a disturbed child.

Well, I can agree and relate. There is such a thing, I think, as mental inbreeding. There's a verse in the Bible I've always liked that says, "As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another." When we share and talk out our ideas we allow ourselves to see them with a better, bigger-picture perspective and we give others the opportunity to go through them and point out their weaknesses, plus offer their own ideas, possibilities, insights. When you think things round and around in your head like a misguided person stuck in a revolving door, you wear the door out and beat down the poor person, too, till he's battered and bruised and can't work well anymore. (In case that confused you, the person is the thoughts, the revolving door your mind. I know that is a hilarious metaphor, but work with me here).

One thing I have been trying to do this year is get myself around the kind of people who are concerned and interested and indeed already possess the things I want to possess. There's a group of guys and girls who meet during the week (separately and then together) to talk about missions, but most of all just to encourage each other, so I've been trying to go to that. Last night we had a retreat and it gave me a chance to see some of the girls there in a different light--people I'd known were what I wanted to be, but I'd held myself back from getting to know. So it was really good last night to talk about struggles and hear what some of them had to say, be encouraged and try to encourage and offer insights to each other.

The best part is, the girls have started a more personal accountability group (the boys already have one) where we get to sit and talk like we did last night...every week! I've missed the first couple of meetings because classwork has been so crazy, but now that that's kind of in a calm, I'm looking forward to going. I can't wait.