don't want to stand here and shout Your praise
and walk away and forget Your Name
i'll stand for you if it's all I do
'cause there is none that compare to You

.
.

it's kind of sad how in one night, you can see those two extremes -- the hope that we hold in Jesus, and the selfishness and dirty nature of our souls desires.

// does the praising end when the music ends and lights turn on?

it's the moments, you know. i finally bought the nikon slr that i'd been thinking about since last summer. there's something about photography -- something that captures moments, thoughts, emotions, feelings, cliche to say the least, but snapshots of that hundredth of a second of a minute of a day that can never be recreated.

even though my old sony cybershot has well earned its use these past 3? 4? years, there's something superficial about digital photography. the instantaneous responses almost make moments trite and insignificant.

on the other hand, darkroom photography, you must work for. each carefully aimed shot, only one in thirty six can you can take, chosen with the perfect aperture and shutter speed and focus and lighting, then rewound into a tiny cylinder of unprocessed film, pried open in a bag only to be wound around that plastic spool into the light-sensitive container, taken out and poured in with processing chemicals, shaken, buffered, shaken again, processed once more, shaken, take out of the liquid and clamped down and dried, cut up and put into sleeves, examined, with one particular frame chosen to put under the enlarger, exposed at five second intervals, processed, gently slid up and down in the chemicals, with finally an exposure time chosen, with or without (most like, of course) the red filter, then exposed, splashed into processing chemicals, shifted up and down, buffered, then finally set, taken out, put under the dryer and out into the open air and light where finally you have a.... that moment.

... compared to digital.
where all you have to do
is point
and click.


maybe i'll take a photography class sometime at school.

stand when the lines are breaking
stand when my heart is aching
stand where You want me I'll be here

// stand, monday morning.



thought of the moment -- it's awfully lonely trying to stand on your own.

three days. three days i've been back, and already all notions of second semester sophomore year being real and changing have washed away by the blinking lights of the intersection of 63rd and cass. i drove down 63rd at night with the windows down, blasting superchic(k) on shine.fm, waiting in the front of the same blinking intersection. (how many times have i driven down that road at night now? hundreds? ... )


maybe this is why home is so scary. it's where i've made mistakes. the football field where that night never should have happened. the house where we got into that fight and i started to cry. this and that and that and this and regrets, oh regrets...


more and more, i see the silent exodus. i see, and i wonder... am i any different? why have i stayed? is it because i sg-led? is it because i served every other sunday morning? what is it that keeps any of us walking (closely) to this faith?


when everyone else has left the battered cross as a trite decision of their pasts... what makes you stand?


//


she won't make a sound, alone in this fight with herself and the fears whispering if she stands she'll fall down
she wants to be found, the only way out is through everything she's running from wants to give up and lie down..

so stand in the rain
stand your ground
stand up when it's all crashing down

i've always wondered that it was that made traveling so tiring,... 'cause if you think about it, most of your time is spent doing things that would normally require minimal effort -- waiting, standing around, waiting, sitting down, waiting, dozing off. maybe it's physically moving from one place to another... maybe it's that sort of emotional upheaval that comes with it.

maybe it's just that -- the knowing that the familiar, the schedule, the waking up in the morning and knowing what your day looks like, the knowing who you'll see when and what you'll eat where.. maybe it's that kind of emotional security that you slowly leave faded away from the double layered glass of airplane seat.


.
.
.



sophomore year has ended. but sometimes it feels like i never left summer.

pitter patter, our footsteps
together they make the most wonderful melody,
down the steps and into the street and
they almost sound hollow
our footsteps, echoing in the depths of the night

pitter patter, our voices
caught somewhere between what could have
would have, should have been said
they scatter in that ambiguous
land of past and regret

and pitter patter we go,
one step forward, two steps
back, retreating back into a place
where there is only

silence.

five hours before my first final, and unsurprisingly enough, i'm caught in a whirlwind of thoughts and emotions and realizations. is that even possible?... for summer to come exactly at the right and wrong time.

in exactly one day, i'll only have one final left of sophomore year. the semester has flown by and has been filled with the gospel of mark and campus on a hill and broken, so broken, so much hurt and confusion and small, so small, but so sure glimpses of hope beyond that.

in exactly one week, i'll be cramming for circuits, packing for the summer, rummaging through junk, donating books, clearing things out, wanting to start over, fresh starts -- how elusive you are...

in exactly one month, i'll be in el segundo, california. living a block away from venice beach in a ritzy, (mostly) all expenses paid for area of socal, with swimming pools and free wireless and cable and beaches and lattes. it's seductive, that lifestyle yknow.. funny, i want to lead a justice small group this fall when my summer seems the antithesis of it. maybe i'll go find kevin blue.

(i'm listening to chicago by sufjan stevens right now, and there's this one line, i make a lot of mistakes, i make a lot of mistakes...)

the summer seems so new. to a place with sunny skies and no name faces and a church that doesn't know your history. it's almost intoxicating...