The Dawning

This page was created as a medium to keep friends up to date with what was happening in my life while I was away from home. And now July has come, I am home at long last, and its purpose has been fulfilled. Moving forward I’m not sure if I’ll use it anymore or not. If I do, you won’t be getting the updates in your inbox as you did before, unless you follow the page and sign up for the emails that way.

I would post pictures of the last days. But alas, I moved away from the computer that had the file resizing program and tomorrow, Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, I’m taking off with a couple friends in an old van for about a month. There is a page on Facebook called Fading West – Our Manifest Destiny which you can find if you wanna see where our white-walled tires roll us.

It’s good to be home. It was the thing that sometimes looked so far away I barely dared to think about it. But the days all gave way to each other, and tonight I’m sitting on my bed in our new house in South Carolina, suitcase packed again. When I stepped off the bus in Kansas it felt like I was indeed getting close to home. The summer air east of the west just kind of wraps you up in a smothering hug like that old lady at your church and doesn’t let you go. The muggy air was my first welcome home. While the rest of the team played a concert in Hutchinson, Kansas, I caught a ride with the Stoltzfus’s who were eastbound from Canon City and made it home in time for the funeral.  I was convinced of these words this past weekend. It is a heavy thing to behold the cutting short of a life well lived.

It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for that day of death is the end of every man, and the living will take it to heart and solemnly ponder its meaning. – Ecclesiastes 7:2 (AMP)

Everyone seems to want to know ‘How has the past year been for you’. It seems kind of like someone asking ‘So how has your marriage been‘. There is too much to tell without some coffee. It’s a blivet. I think I learned a whole lot – and maybe un-learned a few things too. I told someone the other day that in five years I’ll be able to tell you the ways I grew up and how I changed in the last year. Someone asked me recently if I regretted going. And no, I do not regret it at all. I’m quite glad that I moved to Oregon with a whim and a prayer and a guitar. I do regret the fact that I know I left some things unlearned and unsaid and undone. Such is living. It does seem a little like cutting yourself up and leaving a piece behind. Come June there were friends out there I had to part ways with to get back where I belong. Anyway, all to say I’d love to tell you about it all sometime if you’ll buy the coffee.

Tomorrow we plan to leave in ‘the van’ named Tallulah headed for the west coast. For the past several days we’ve been building beds and buying mattresses and spray painting flowers and frequenting mechanic shops and finding a spare tire and becoming steadily poorer in preparation for an unforgettable adventure. And adventure that we will greatly embellish and recount to our children in the days to come.

While I’m thinking of it, I think one thing I’ve been learning lately had to do with cleverness. I tend to get caught up in the romance of being clever, of saying something in three sentences that could have been said in one. It’s the same thing I think that wills us strive for answers and methods that no one else has ever found or tried, to our own glory. I’ve been realizing that sometimes everyone does something a certain way because it is indeed the best way, regardless of how clever it is to do it another way; and regardless of how tired the method may seem. Just because something is mainstream and widespread doesn’t mean it isn’t worth your time. The masses love Nike and the NIV and Coldplay…and really all of those things are quite good. Being clever really doesn’t give you access to joy barred from everyone else. Hating mainstream or orthodox stuff for its own sake is a waste of time.

“There are some very clever people who cannot enjoy the joy unless they understand it. There are other and even cleverer people who say that they lose the joy the moment they do understand it. Thank God I was never clever, and could always enjoy things when I understood them and when I didn’t. I can enjoy the orthodox Tory, though I could never understand him. I can also enjoy the orthodox Liberal, though I understand him only too well.” – G.K. Chesterton

Cheers,

Javen.

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