W.M.O.

Over Christmas Break, some friends and I went down to my grandmother's cabin in the swamp. As usual, the cabin's still breathing sweet memories of my many firsts as a kid.

My first swim in a river. My first deer. My first taste for home cooking. My first love for the family that I was with.

The more I go back, the more I miss it. It burns wondering about what my grandfather would have thought of the person I'm becoming. I'd just like to know how much more or less we'd laugh together. Personally, I feel like we'd be so much closer, and it almost made me angry that we aren't able to be.

But that's just me being selfish. He still lives on in that cabin, still swims out in Jones Creek, and loves more passionately than ever in the stories my grandmother shares about him.

Our God was so comforting with this during my last night of the trip when I couldn't fall asleep. I still love my grandfather, and I'm so happy the Lord lets us grow closer.


This is a poem I left in the creek where we scattered his ashes:

i find it difficult
sleeping in the house that
trembles at night
to the crack of a lion's roar

even though i've heard it said
that you ran around most nights
leaving bed sheets cool
and homes awry
with a print of absence

but wasn't it your hands
that carved this mantle
that hung this fixture
and talked to this pillow?

rather the thought of you
letting down tangles of
i love yous to your daughters
and desks covered with children
make shape for the mane i remember

whether you're here and hidden
or gone and poor riddance
the old annuals and
home with its tremors
again has me singing
the loved hymns you used to write

A Happy Birthday to My Dear Cousin

Sympathy for the Scientist


hold your summer fun
in teeth
only, you call them rivets
imagining the deflating rate
-the loss of a brother,
the combing of hair beginning to thin

remembering to never let it leave
any loss for your art
while knowing your brush
to always weigh even
with the matter that made it

Noah

It's been a dry semester. Usually, my shoes are filled with it; the grass is most often bent by its weight.
But it's been kept hidden for some reason. Not that we should ever forget our sweet memories. Of dancing with it because a dance is appropriated to those without shame.
I cry remembering the time I watched myself first stained, then made clean in the same moment. Neither shoes nor grass cared to warn me of such duality.

But how worshipful is the grass that makes a life out of growing and clothing itself in the Rain?

The Times, They Are A'Changin

So, life's a bit bizarre.
Growing up, I always thought I'd follow my family to school in Georgia, yet I ended up in North Carolina. I always thought I'd be strict, organized, on time, yet I'm scrambling at all ends just to make deadlines and meetings.
And most recently, I always thought I'd be regarded as an athlete, a collegiate runner, yet I'm now just a college kid trying to understand what his identity has been all along.
I recently decided to stop running here at Wake. And in no ways can a nine-word sentence explain how hard that was for me. It's been something that I was wrestling with for so long, but I had the hardest time surfacing my thoughts or feelings on it.
I couldn't figure out why God was changing the plans that I thought He and I had discussed and agreed upon. Yet, I knew He was telling my heart that it's time to let go and follow Him.
It's not a decision that I liked wholly, altogether. It caused me to have conversations with my parents and other people that I worried would made me look like I wasn't strong or good enough to finish what I'd begun. But God is so comforting sometimes.
The night I was going to call my dad on the phone and explain things to him is cemented in my mind as the most nervous I've ever been for a conversation. I thought he'd be disappointed, embarrassed, and just thoroughly angry. Instead, I think it was the most loving and consoling he's ever been. He was affirming in his support of me and my relationship with my Savior. I know that God wanted me to make a bold decision for Him, and He so quickly answered with His protection, love, and grace in my dad that night.
And so times are different now. I'm trying to focus on how I can be most effective relationally with people here and how I can continue to pursue my God on a daily basis.
God has been so consistent in revealing His intentions in all this. So now I don't worry about if things are changing from the course they were originally planned for. I'm trying not to worry about certain claims that say the God of the Old Testament doesn't quite line up with this God of the New Testament. The God I know is steady in His love and grace. He is consistently affirming me as His creation and son, and just as equally, He's pushing me, testing me to grow in my faith and trust in Him. And I believe that He's so sovereign in whatever direction He's pulling me in.

"I think God just.... Pooped on Me?"

This summer I've been working at the church that I typically attended throughout the school year. It wasn't my original plan for this summer. During the year, I had master plans of living abroad, loving those I couldn't verbally communicate with, fighting to make God known where His name was cursed, and then finally lying down to a warrior's rest each night under stars that beamed at my existence. Essentially, I was to be Indiana Jones with a Bible.

Funny how it didn't end up that way. Instead, I find myself in a rather tame situation. I live in a modest house with a basement. I make dinner for one each night. On occasion, I spend time with friends. More often that not, I spend time writing, reading, or watching romantic comedies.

Domesticated in cages framed by bills, flat tires, and unfinished dreams. I'm starting to wonder if I'll ever fear for my life more than saving accounts. If I'll ever find my way to the peak of a mountain, instead of referencing mall directories. If I'll ever carry a child for miles in the night so that she might receive medical attention and know the security in God's sovereignty.

But leave it to elementary kids to bring me back to reality. Last night, I felt loved and needed. I felt like I was being spread over the youth at church. Strawberry jam thinned over dried toast.

Snaggle-toothed snickers. Nodding affirmations. Tightly squeezed embraces. Yes, my God is alive. He's constantly reminding me of that. He is understanding of my fears, convicting in my disbelief, warm when I choose to sleep face-down in the snow. And sometimes, He makes me feel like Dr. Jones, himself.

To the Blog I've Abandoned

I'm sorry that I walked out on you months ago. It certainly wasn't fair to you. And I know we never talked about it.
But, you see, you were killing me.
I'm not ready to die. The thought scares me all too much. You scare me all too much. So, I left you and began hoarding all my poems, thoughts, and emotions to myself.
It was a wonderful time for me; I was free to write anything that I wanted and never had to worry of what you would think or how you would shudder to bear my mismatched words and phrases. I never had to worry about inconveniencing you at absurd hours, disrupting your dreamless rest with my unruly nightmares.
For it was in this new manner that I found life. Behind moleskinned covers, I made collages with my heart: knowing all too well that it was only myself that could ever make left from right in such a blotted mess. And I began to watch that scrapbooked heart of mine beat more and more with every additional stanza. Bread was broken and received with each new page. Wine was poured and consumed with every drop of ink.
Good gracious, blog, I felt loved!

But, as you can see, I've returned. I've returned for no other purpose than that I realized you were right. It's time to let you take this life from me.
Yes, there is a heart and a love thriving within my journal, but its pulse remains there, bound by thread and parchment. I lived in there for months and fostered this great life. However, the question slowly started creeping in. "If I'm growing this heart of mine, then certainly a harvest must be coming. So, who is it that's coming to pull me out of the dirt and rejoice for the fulfillment that I can help to provide?"
I realized I was my own farmer, and I was suddenly swept with despair. How frivolous would it be to uproot myself? Just another unwashed, unmissed, rotting carrot.
It was so clear. I needed a real farmer: someone to whom I can give myself and will tend to me even after the harvest comes.

So here I am blog. It's good to see you again.

(Genesis 2:8)

A Classroom Setting

I

He paints his words on the wall

In Sanskrit, of course

But the students,

They don't seem to mind

He asks,

Why don't you answer me?

And so we answer,

It's because we don't trust each other

He turns back

Gambling and rolling

With jokes and allusions

I do like him, I promise

II

Bangs,

Hiding her eyes from

Smeared remains of chalk and rights

I pray her name to be wisdom

But fear for the worst,

It's shaping out as Apostasy already

Should I learn too much

And find out that

The fluff and feathers from

My dreaming pillows

Can no more help me fly

Than hollow bones

I do like Wisdom, I promise