Don't say anything

I am tired. No. that's not it... I am weary. For all practical purposes my life is great. I have a place to live (laughable though it may be) I have food, a good job, friends...the list goes on. But in the midst of all of that, I am weary. The kind of weary a t-shirt gets when it's left out in the backyard all summer. You know what I mean. It sits out there hanging over a rail or something, soaking up the rain...or the sprinkler, whichever you prefer, then drying out in the sun...all day...everyday. It seems like it would be great but the wear is obvious. Faded colors, weak fabric, peeling letters...etc. I've actually seen a deep, vibrant, alive, green turn to a drab, lifeless, unexciting grey, and that's what I'm starting to feel like.

Don't get me wrong, I don't feel hopeless or anything. I know that this doesn't have to be the case but to be perfectly honest, that is just the way it is right now. It's frustrating because my entire perspective changes. In some ways it seems like the lens of "everything is alive, people are growing and learning and moving. The world is a ripe garden" is traded for the complete oppostite. The view of disintegration prevails. Instead of seeing life and gowth the world just seems to be full of people falling apart and not learning, not growing...it's like everything is turning into one big compost pile of hard luck, pain, lost relationships, poor choices, death and desperation.

I know that this is not the reality of the world and I'm not meaning to say that it is, but this is what I see sometimes. It's frustrating.

What might be equally frustrating are well intentioned attempted tidbits of wisdom that sound about as empty as a church. I'm not speaking specifically about any one situation, but maybe this is coming from a long history of life with a small group of friends and a big group of acquaintances....so I'll rant a bit here (skip to the next paragraph if you wish:)...I'm just sick of having people try to turn the grey dying world I sometimes see into some kind of explosion of color. All you have is a sharpie and you're not Monet. I just want to tell people that if they want to "speak into my life" they're gonna have to be a lot more present than the once-every-two-months-let's meet-for-coffee friend my life is full of. I don't need anymore of them. If you want to be part of my life...be part of my life. Just be with me...anyway, please excuse the rant.

In the end of it all I think that I'm learning what life gets like when I'm that once-every-two-month-let's-meet-for-coffee friend with the One who made all of this. I also think I'm still inching along on the journey inward and this is part of it.

Lately I've been re-reading some Wendell Berry poetry. I keep coming back to about 5 or 6 that are really meaningful to me right now. One of them is called Thirty More Years. I wish I could read it aloud to you...but you'll have to settle for reading it yourself.

Thirty More Years

When I was a young man,
grown up at last, how large
I seemed to myslef! I was a tree,
tall already, and what I had not
yet reached, I would yet grow
to reach. Now, thirty more years
added on, I have reached much
I did not expect, in a direction
unexpected. I am growing downward,
smaller, one among the grasses.


On a side note. In the next week I'm going to apply for a job in Spain. I'd appreciate some prayers.



goodnight.