This Week…

July 24, 2007 | 1:17 AM

This week I’m not going to blog about meditation, as I’d previously considered.  I’ve been reading about it in Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline.  I’ve got two books from Whitney and Willard coming, and I have little to no experience with meditation outside what I’m reading.  So I’m going to read more about it before I think about speaking to meditation.

And really, I don’t want to sound like I’m making excuses, but I’ve just got a few other things on my mind.  I’m not one to proclaim a particular date that I became a Christian, but if someone asks I usually offer July 20, 1999.  Eight years in, I’m contemplating how much has changed since then and how much I still have to go.

Tomorrow my mother begins her chemo therapy.  The first session, four months.  The whole thing has made me think more about the fragility of life, even though I’ve seen my dad through two heart attacks.  There’s just not a lot I can say on here about it, but it’s been very thought-consuming.  (Aside to mom: that doesn’t mean you get to withhold information though, so don’t even think about it.)

Wednesday is my birthday.  Twenty-six.  It’s not a day I particularly celebrate anymore- it’s more of a day I spend to myself, away from people.  I feel like I have a lot of those these days.  My former mentor and pastor, Kevin Lee, reminded me that it’s okay to be a solitary person, and it’s just as dysfunctional to always crave the limelight as it is to seclude yourself.  I’m trying not to seclude myself- I still get out of the apartment.  I just prefer my own company lately.  I think when you live in a place like this, and you don’t have someone who you’re really close to, deep down, that you have to get out and think.  It’s hard to find a place to be alone, and also free.  I had it on the road, and I miss it.  Desperately.

So this week I’ve got a lot to think about.  One more year in New Orleans, and then off to- somewhere.  I’ve got a few ideas, and I really hope they work out.  If I had my way, I’d move to the DFW Metroplex and spend a little time under a particular pastor.  But right now I’m too far away from that move to think too hard about it.  Then… maybe Boulder.  I’ve never been there, but I’ve been to Denver before.  I think I’d like a place like Boulder.  I hear it’s nice.

For now, I’ll read and study.  I’m going to continue to read on the subject of sustainable development.  (I read Leonardo DiCaprio is going to give it a test-run in Kansas.)  I’m going to start reading, memorizing, and meditating on Colossians next week.  It’s something I planned to do two years ago, and again decided to pursue last Spring.  Maybe this time it’ll stick.

Posted in Life