let's go swing

My roommate, Greg, went for a bike ride this morning and while out took these pictures.

As he showed them to me this evening my heart was filled with...something...I still can't place the emotion. Maybe it was a combination of emotions...

joy
freedom
longing

I wasn't even there, but I can hear them laughing. I can hear their foreign tongue spitting out insults that I haven't learned yet. I can hear them pretending to be somewhere/somebody/sometime that they are not. I can hear youth.

It's been really hot here. Summer is [here] coming. The 3 months that I work 9 months for is on the horizon...literally. When the sun rises tomorrow I'll be off to Prague to get ready for our interns who arrive on Tuesday. The time for work is here.

It's a strange feeling...this growing up.

The coming heat used to signal freedom. It used to be a signal that lakes and waterskiing and bridge-jumping and wiffle ball and bike rides and roller coasters and (your favorite summer memory here) were coming. But now, it signals the busiest time of the year. It is still the most exciting time of the year for me. But its different. There is responsibilty and caring for others and deadlines and problems (oh the problems) and (your growing pain here).

That's the weird thing about growing up. When we're young we are always dreaming about what we want to be when we're older and how much better it'll be when I'm 16, 18, 21, [enter your desired age here]. And now we are older and we are dreaming of how we wish we could go back to those ages when our dreams were still attainable, we had no responsiblitiy, and now we're looking kcab <-- to 16, 18, 21 [enter any year lower than your current age here].

I want to be content with the age I. But not just that. I don't want to stay there...in contentment...I want to be content with the age that I am

AND

LIVE IN THE
joy
anticipation
freedom
dreams
adventure
THAT BOYS LIVE IN

I want to stop and swing.

wandering

a long time ago

in a state far, far away

bobby b gave me a book that i put on my shelf

then that book was put in a box and taken to czech

then it sat on my shelf again

finally i read it

wow.

________________



the book is called A Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins.

it was inspiring. touching. challenging. revealing.

inspiring - to travel more
touching - by the relationship between a man and his dog (really impressive, since i don't like animals that much)
challenging - to spend more time with people, not to speed through life
revealing - the good and bad sides of america

as i read page 14 and peter described the state of the us at the time (early 70s), i thought: this isn't much differnt than the state of the us right now

_every time i watched tv or read a newspaper (or internet), it seemed like the end of the world
_we Americans were blowing up anything and everyone for no clear reason in Vietnam (Iraq)
_southern rednecks were in a quiet war to wipe blacks off the face of the earth (i read this during the Don Imus flap)
_what upset me most of all were the booming industrial powers that were destroying our only environment (see inconvenient truth)
_there seemed to be no hope or no help for the united states of america, once the greatest country in the world and my homeland

not much has changed in 35 years.


_________________


i was also inspired by what peter termed "mileage craziness". this the state we get in when the destination becomes more important than the journey there. in his words, "obsessively placing more importance on how many miles are traveled than on the real reason for traveling...my main purpose was to be where i was. most important, i wanted to find the real people out there, what they were made of, experience who they were, how they lived, and how they worked for a living."

i'd love to say that i don't suffer from "milegage craziness", but i do. big time. in almost all i do, getting it done is more important than the process...even now...i just want to finish this blog post...i don't want to slow down and enjoy the process of writing [creating].

i do it with traveling too...get there...wherever there is...as quick as possible...don't stop...don't take pictures...don't leave the main path...don't adventure...just get there

since reading this book i've made a couple of commitments to myself:

_ pick up hitchhikers
_ stop more for pictures

hitchhikers because they are stories (hopefully i'll be able to understand them!)
pictures because they tell stories
both because they will slow me down


________________


a couple of weeks ago my friend aubrey was here. one of the things that was great is that while travelling to prague we

took our time



before we walked around the town we played with a little kid



and while we traveled around prague we

went

where
we

wanted
_art galleries
_cafes
_we took pictures







i think i'm learning to slow down...

a great week

i just spent the last week with some of the most amazing people on the planet.

here is a pictoral highlight:

_BLONG-O-BALL (shirt on?shirt off?)


_swing dancing with the jv kids


_sit here


_owen


_aubs


_bloggin friends (464 to 7 to 51)


_dynamic community (amplitheatre...ample-theatre...apple-theatre?)


_amazing worship


_transformational teaching

yams