Wow, this is my new favorite thing. Can you believe that people just create sounds like this? Music that makes you feel excited and scared all at the same time? I swear it's like magic!

Early morning restlessness

Most of the time I'm completely happy living in my sleepy little township. I like seeing the same people at the grocery store. Waving to the same dog walkers and joggers on the tree lined streets. I know the names of my librarians and the woman who delivers my mail. (but not the workers behind the desk at the post office because those folks are rude, yo) It's where I grew up and I generally enjoy the peace and quiet.

Except for this moment. This early morning moment when I'm wide awake before the sun is up. In my heart, this moment is full of expectation and I want the world around me to reflect that feeling. There are signs of the impending day evident outside my window, the call of birds, the faint glow of the sunrise on the horizon. I want more than those small signs, I want drama and loudness and an ever growing increase of activity until it all just crests into a shining new day.

It's this time of the day when I want to live in a big city. To watch the new day dawn with the sounds of buses and subway trains rumbling through the streets. To smell the air ripe with the offerings of bakeries and coffee shops. I want to see the harsh neon lights give way to the cool gray of dawn all glinting off high-rise windows. I want to experience all those moments when night tips off the precipice into a new morning.

But, of course, I don't really want to spend that morning in the big city. Or even the night before, if I'm honest with myself. My heart truly does find contentment in the safety and silence of my semi-rural home. Just every once in a while, I find myself in this rare early morning moment when I want something more.

Library and short attention spans

When I spend a long time in a library (or bookstore) I tend to amass a large pile of random books. I just can’t help myself, I have to gather up all these stacks of books that bear little to no connection to each other.

The only connection these books have is that I want to know more about them. Today’s stack includes quantum physics, religion, biographies, mathematics, poetry and what I thought was history but might be crime fiction. I mostly likely won’t take all these books home…maybe not even any of them. Instead I’ll spend an hour flipping through three or four of them at a time, scanning and skipping through the pages. Soaking up bits of knowledge in some sort of ADD-fueled haze where I gorge myself on as much information as quickly as possible. My brain doesn’t care if it’s reading about Dirac’s theoretical work on magnetic monopoles or the twice-translated poetry of the Quechan tribesmen, it just wants to take it all in.

Even I don’t understand the way my brain works at times. I don’t get why there are times like today when I can flit from subject to subject and still retain so much information but other days I can focus on just one topic and fail to remember anything. There are days like today when I have music playing in my ears, four different books opened in my lap and three tabs of reddit open on my computer and yet I feel at peace. To switch from that multitasking craziness to days when I can barely focus on a book when there are crickets outside is such a mystery to me.

For now, I’ll enjoy it. I’ll read about poetry from ancient Egypt and modern day forensic accountants. I’ll dive through the equations of chemistry and read about the plight of the buffalo. My afternoon will be filled with a dozen different authors speaking to me about their passions and even if I don’t understand everything about my brain, I’ll enjoy the experience.

Current Music: Sea Wolf – Dear Fellow Traveler

Further indication of my age

The stickers I got for my birthday are now decorating my notebook for the class my Pastor is teaching. Which, in case you were wondering, is NOT called ‘Churchy Churchiness Class”.

Communion

Recently when we had the Lord's Supper at our church, I was praying and got completely confused. (side note: this happens ALL the time when I pray. I'm thankful God doesn't have a problem keeping up with my wild trains of thought) It struck me as weird that we eat the bread (body of Christ) before we drink the wine/juice (blood of Christ).

Doesn't it seem to be more logical to do it the other way around? To first 'be washed' by the blood of Christ before then being filled by him? To be cleansed of our sins before partaking of something new? When I asked a friend about the practice she informed me that we do it that way because that's how Jesus did it. Which, you know, good answer. But also, very unsatisfying for me. I know that I don't believe that this is actually Christ's blood or body, that I believe that we do this because Christ told us to, as a memorial, a way to honor and remember rather than a physical partaking of Christ's sacrifice...but I still can't get past the fact that it seems backwards.