I crave … days built around writing, reading and time spent with family and friends.

- Dana Jennings, New York Times

I know what I want to be.

I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells.
- Dr. Seuss

A dear friend of mine posted this quote, and I had to share it.

How often as we grow up do we forget the simple joys of being silly? There’s a time and a place for “grown-up” life, of course. But it doesn’t have to be every minute of every day! Sometimes, the very best thing you can do is fall down laughing hysterically. You can have a root beer float with extra ice cream. You can dare to dream of a world that doesn’t look like the world you currently see. You can imagine a place where people can fly, where they can turn invisible, where they can leap tall buildings in a single bound. There’s joy in stories like that.

And just think about it. If no one imagined the nonsense of people flying, would we have airplanes?
If no one imagined the nonsense of being able to communicate instantly over thousands of miles, would we have the telephone?
If no one imagined the nonsense of other worlds, would they have stopped to look through telescopes and discover them?
If no one imagined the nonsense of a man on the moon, would Neil Armstrong have made history?

You see, because nonsense sometimes becomes reality, but only if you’re willing to imagine something bigger and grander and crazier. Sometimes, wacky is wonderful. You never know where it might lead you. Sometimes, my stories are full of nonsense. I write about worlds that don’t exist today. But maybe one day, they will.

At the very least, I hope my stories make people smile and imagine a different place, a different time, a different life. At the very least, I hope they do what stories are meant to do – entertain. In the meantime, what nonsense are you thinking about? What if it became a reality? Just something to think about…

Sometimes, despite my best efforts, I forget that today is not forever.

The last few weeks have been particularly difficult ones, for a variety of reasons. I’m on the job hunt (being a writer isn’t exactly the most stable of careers) and I’ve been trying to start a new community and I’ve been staying up way too late for my own good… just to name a few. And being the staunch optimist that I am, I have a tendency to throw off difficult days and say, “This doesn’t matter! In the long term, this will be relegated to a tiny little sidenote if it’s lucky!” And then I throw in a smile.

But the truth is, sometimes those days from hell do matter. They overshadow the good things in life, and for some ridiculous reason manage to turn their whispering voices into booming shouts that overwhelm my ability to say, “This moment is not forever.” Sometimes those days seem like they’ll be eternal. This is life. It will always be like this. It’s an insidious little thought that takes up residence far too easily sometimes.

But I’m slowly realizing something. I’m not there yet, and I’m sure it will take me a while to fully grasp it. When I face bad moments of life, my tendency has always been to look for the good that’s still there hiding. But sometimes, it’s okay to just stop and say, “This is not good. This is not what I signed up for. And I want off the roller coaster, please.” Somehow facing the problems makes them a little smaller. They’re not as scary. It seems a little counterintuitive. Instead of resorting to my sunny optimism – I become authentic. Sometimes I cry.

And then I can figure out how to work through difficulties. Because really, why would you want to overcome something good? It’s only when you establish that something is bad, that something is out of order or general sense of “rightness,” that you can finally move on. You can only overcome something by noticing that it’s something to overcome in the first place.

And so I’m slowly becoming a more authentic person. While I haven’t lost my optimism yet, and hope that I never do, I’m sitting here at my kitchen table with breakfast and the beginnings of a new perspective.

Today is not forever. Good things are yet to come… and how grateful I will be when they finally arrive.

I’m beginning (or re-beginning, if you will) a community of Spoken Word artists at Mosaic. Last week, I encouraged them to write about community – what it looks like, what it feels like, what it brings to your life. And what sort of leader would I be if I didn’t also write the same things?

The problem with community is that it tends to defy explanation. You can’t imagine if it you don’t have it, and oftentimes, it sneaks up on you. You realize that you’ve been living in community and you didn’t even realize it. But on the flip side, community isn’t something that just happens. A lot of times, it takes a lot of purposeful thinking, and a lot of semi-awkward moments before it develops. But we were never meant to be an island, living this life fully on our own. We were meant to live life surrounded by others – people to laugh with, cry with, be held accountable by.

It’s one thing when you’re born into a community. That’s easy. I was so lucky to have that be the story of my life. My parents had lots of friends, wonderful friends who just happened to have kids my age. Today, at 24 years old, I have several friends I don’t remember meeting. They’ve just always been there, and always will be there. I can’t imagine my life without them. These are the friends I would fly halfway around the world to visit without batting an eye. I grew up with them, and we all grew together. In so many ways, we’re still the same people we were in kindergarten. I’m still naturally on the quiet side. Some are still some of the most adventurous, outgoing people I know. And yet, it’s so wonderful to be able to look back and see how different we all are – how much we changed. I love not having to explain childhood stories to them. They get it. They were probably there with me!

Building community doesn’t just happen, though. It takes time and space. Lots of coffee. Lots of movies and dinner. But it is so incredibly worth it! Because suddenly, you wake up one day laughing at something a friend said the night before. You tell them about your day, and listen to their stories. It becomes a second family. The point is not that you have someone to listen to you now. The point is that you listen to others. Remind them that they are valuable and important. Remember that you are never alone. You have the honor of having a front row seat to their celebrations and joys.

And the struggles of life – while still incredibly difficult – will be wrapped up in balance and hope. Imagine a seesaw. Struggles on one side, community on the other. Friends to remind you that you are more than the worst parts of yourself.

Because tomorrow, when they’re in the same spot, you will have the honor of doing the same for them. That’s the beauty of a community. There’s always someone there saying, “You belong here.”

One of my favorite artists ever!

Jennifer Knapp, with her lovely voice and incredibly literary lyrics, was an enormous part of my musical life after God finally caught my attention. After several years, she decided to take a break and simply disappeared from the musical landscape. And now, quietly, she has re-emerged, 7 years after the release of her last album.

To listen to her new song, click here.

So, Thursday night in Los Angeles, I was honored to be in the audience at Hotel Cafe as Jen Knapp took the stage for the first time in 4 1/2 years. She opened her set with “A Little More,” the only song she played from her previous albums. “I figure you guys have had seven years with the last three albums, so I thought I’d give you something new.” The next several songs were her brand new music, songs that she’d written over the last few months. And they were beautiful… heart-wrenching… amazing.

There’s something so inspiring and encouraging about new Jennifer Knapp music! For so long, her music belonged in my past, reminders of a time where I was not entirely put together. And now, just as I am finally working towards wholeness, as I’m finally becoming the person I was created to be, even her music is becoming new. I’m so grateful for what has transpired in my life over the last few months.

Now I have a new soundtrack to go with it as well!

It’s a happy Sunday morning. And as I sit, drinking coffee and reading the morning news, I’ve come across such a crazy story in the LA Times. (You can read it in it’s entirety here.)

In Santa Fe every year, an enormous crowd gets together and stuffs a huge wood and wire figure – Zozobra – full of everything they’d like to forget and move on from. Hurts. Sorrows. Paid off mortgages. Old wedding dresses from failed marriages. Some are simply written on paper and stuffed in. But then, the crowd waits until evening, gathered up together with their picnic dinners, bottles of wine and good friends.

And then the party begins.

They burn the enormous figure stuffed full of their sorrows. The hope is that, in the morning, they will wake up freed from the pain they’ve been living with. It’s a beautiful and somehow strange image. How amazing, that no matter how different we are from each other, no matter the paths our lives have taken, we all live with a desire to be free from sorrow. And somehow that freedom almost always includes a community around us, friends who will sit with us, hold our hands through the pain, and then sit with with us as we watch a huge bonfire. They want our freedom just as much as we do. Where there’s people, there’s always good food and perhaps a bottle of pinot nearby.

I’ve been guilty of trying to be an island so often. I can do this on my own! But it’s never true. Now, I’m wondering. Instead of waiting until we’ve lived through so much difficulty before we let anyone else sit next to us, what if we started out with the community around us? What if we started with the picnic baskets and good friends rather than ending with them? How much different would our life be?

We were never intended to do this life alone. Never intended to try to make it by ourselves. No matter how hard we fight, there will always be sadness and difficulty. But it’s so much easier to deal with if you’re making s’mores with others around a bonfire on the beach.

And so I hope that my life is one where community and love are the beginnings of it all, never the last resorts.

Just my thoughts on the day. And to all of you who’ve stood by me, holding my hand as the fires burn – thank you! I mean it when I say I could never have done it without you.

It seems unbelievable that it has been eight years already.

How much has changed in my life? I was a sixteen-year-old high school student. Today, I’m married, out of college, living in an entirely new state. New friends, new experiences, new dreams, a completely new life. But somehow, as I watch the morning news reports from today, I can’t escape that darkness that somehow surrounds the little tiny date in the corner of the screen – 9/11. It’s as if those numbers have become ubiquitous with death and tragedy. Now, I know that President Obama has gone on to create a national day of service on September 11th, as if to wash away the barest hint of the sorrow that has surrounded that day.

But at the end of the day, September 11th will always be tinged with grief. There are those who will remember exactly what they were doing when. It was instantly a moment of history. A moment we knew we would share with our children and grandchildren. “What were you doing that day?”

While it’s been eight years, I still remember exactly how I heard about it. It was a quiet morning in my house. Mom usually had the tv on, watching the news as we all readied ourselves for the day. But that day, for whatever reason, the television remained silent. I listened to cds in the morning rather than the radio. I gathered up my stuff for school, probably packed a lunch, and headed out the door. Got in my little car and started driving. I drove down Ward Road, turned on 58th. Erin O’Donnell’s “No Place So Far” came on the radio. What a lovely morning.

And then the song ended.

The radio dj for the morning show I listened to was usually crazy. Loud, funny, off-the-wall. But he quietly announced the name of the song, and began to briefly describe what had happened in New York City less than two hours before. I pressed down on the gas pedal, willing myself to get to school as fast as possible. Somewhere with televisions. Somewhere where someone can tell me what is really going on. I mean, this is a joke, right? A sick, horrible prank? But instead, I rushed in to find my high school almost completely silent. I found Alli. “What is going on?” She repeated the exact things I’d heard on the radio. This time, the story of the Pentagon was added in. And something about a plane crash in a field somewhere.

Everything was so strange that day. A few teachers tried to have class. Most just pulled a tv into the classroom. And we watched it unfold, over and over. We were in a state of shock, mingled with the beginnings of panic. I still have a note Alli wrote me, asking me what I thought might happen. She had her thoughts, but at the end of the day, no one really knew. To this day, I still find it strange that I didn’t talk to my family until I got home from school that night.

I walked into my house and turned on the television. I’d only missed half an hour of broadcast driving home from school, but somehow, I felt completely out of the loop. I couldn’t bear to watch, but couldn’t bear to look away. It was as though I was afraid I might miss something. Like somehow, just by watching television, I was connected to the world around me. And I wanted to be connected. Never before had I felt so alone, so vulnerable, so scared. No matter what I did, I think that moment might have been the end of my childhood. I still don’t understand it all, and I still have a lot of whys for God to answer one day…

Strange how so many years can pass. I couldn’t tell you what I wore on Saturday. But I remember September 11th, 2001 like it was yesterday. And I will never forget.

“The place where God calls you to is the place where your deep enjoyment and the world’s deep hunger meet.”

- Frederick Buechner

I love it!

How is it that sometimes dreams can be so exquisitely close that you can taste them, and yet in the same moment, still be frustratingly out of reach?

It is an unfortunate paradox of life…. One which I intend to get to the bottom of.

This one comes to us from the wonderfully quirky Mark Twain.

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
Mark Twain

One of the best things about travel is seeing the world through someone else’s eyes. Eating with them, living with them, breathing the same air and the same passions they do. Our world is a lovely patchwork quilt, and, o, how much we would miss out on by just staying in our own little square.

You travel, and you are never the same…

I miss my days in Scotland…