Results of Fishing Trip

Going Fishing

I am heading down to the Louisiana Coast with John B. to fish for redfish this weekend. Weather is supposed to be clear but windy. With all the wind, we may not catch many fish, and may even return home earlier than planned (Monday). Can't wait, though, to get to the coast and smell the salt water, see the waves, and hear the shorebirds. After many years, a statement from a devotional book that I read while in college stays with me: "Life makes strong statements where sand and salt water meet." I am ready for some of those statements.

Shelley, it was great having you home over Thanksgiving and we are already counting the days until your Christmas break. We so hope that you are feeling better and that the intense stomach pains have eased up. We love you and and Luke to the moon and back. Dad

Geese Appear High Above Us

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.



Trinity is having a Thanksgiving worship service on Monday night I am going to try to go to. A trinity alumni who graduated my freshman year is coming to talk about his time spent in Peru and California during the service. 6 DAYS until Thanksgiving Break!

I hope my computer makes it through senior year

It's going to be a miracle if my computer makes it through senior year. I am trying to research space colonies for an argumentation debate and it keeps freezing. Plus the spacebar does not really work...I have been telling it nice things all semester.

I tried to get on here to post a poem. However, no microsoft word will not work...I'll continue this later.

Countdown to Thanksgiving!

I can't express how excited I am that I will be back in Memphis this time in two weeks. Thanks again, dad, for working out the plane ticket so that I can stay an extra day.

Mom, I'm glad to hear about your DVD! I love that you seem to have an endless supply of energy for new projects. Dad, I was just thinking tonight about how I wanted to have some new poetry to read. I'm going to check out some of Wendall Barry's work. When I'm home over Thanksgiving I want to go to the library as well as the book store and get some more poetry to read. Reading it on the computer is not nearly as enjoyable. I was over at a friend's house last night and he had his dad's old copy of Trout Fishing in America on his bookshelf along with other books by the same author. I immediately thought of you.

I registered for my last semester of college classes this week. I have no idea where the past three and a half years have gone. It feels like just yesterday y'all dropped me off for the PLUNGE in the rented mini-van thing...And yet, I know I am a very different person than who I came to Texas as in the fall of 2007.

For my final semester in college I am going to be taking the following classes:
Racism in Modern Brazil (plus a one hour senior independent study to add onto this class)
Growing up in America (taught through the Education Department)
Peer tutor for a freshman writing workshop
Anthropology Internship (with TRLA)

I'm already getting really excited about the possibility of interning in DC this summer. I really hope I am able to work everything out with that.

I am currently writing a PoliSci paper on the rights of undocumented students in the US since the 1980's. It's due next week so I'll send y'all a copy once I get it finished.

Dad, I loved your comment on continuing to grow and develop as a person and child of God. It's wonderful to hear that life does not become stagnant, nor do we, as long as we keep living in joy and gratitude.

I have posted a picture of me dressed as storch cat and Claire in her "ClaireLines" outfit from Halloween. Did y'all get the newspaper article I sent you??

Love from Texas! (It's still 85 degrees!)

How the Heart Opens

I've been reading Janisse Ray's Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, which is part memoir, part environmentalist book about her childhood in Baxley, Georgia, which is near some of the towns I lived in growing up (Tifton, Ga., Statesboro, Savannah). She includes a lovely quote from Albert Camus, of all people, that I really like. Pardon the male exclusive language, but that is Camus's language not Ray's or mine.

"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."

I"m not sure what all this meant to Camus, but to me it evokes a powerful recall of the central images that come together in my own life that open my heart towards God, my family, friends, and strangers. Those great and simple images for me: fishing, fiction, faith, and family. Somewhere, right in those few things, is where so much of meaning and passion lies for me. I think they are the keys to who I am now, who I have been in the past, and who God is continuing to shape me to become in the future.

Calling, Elizabeth O'Connor

I ran across this quote from Elizabeth O'Connor while I was reading for our formation for ministry class at MTS. "One of the ways we know the call to be God's call is when a feeling of awe-filled dread is combined with one of being companioned." (From Cry Pain, Cry Hope). I like that a great deal. ddb