enjoy the silence.

"Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent, and discerning if he holds his tongue." --Proverbs 17:28

So one of these days I'm going to learn to keep my mouth shut. I think I'm a much better writer than talker. I mean, my writing might not be eloquent, but I can only think of a couple of times when something I've written has come back to bite me in the butt. Don't get me wrong--I've left in writing my share of idiot-markers along the road, but I don't feel quite as bad about having to retract something I've left in writing as I do about having to clean up spoken-word spills. I guess it's because I'm not as awkward on paper as I am in real life. Telephones, voicemails, and camcorders are my sworn enemies: put me in an arena with any of these contraptions and watch them hack away at my usable intellegence quotient. Hmmm.
So I guess there are one of two lessons to be learned here:
either
1) I am a human anachronism who should have been born before the age of word-capturing devices (and born mute, as an added safeguard)
or
2) I should quit speaking as much as I do.
The first item isn't really a lesson to be learned, but a one-item list looks kind of dumb. Come to think of it, this post looks kind of dumb. I take back that part about me being less awkward in print than in person.

--the management

direction?

Last night I was reminded of how powerful and important are the prayers of a mother for her son.

recently.

the day before yesterday was bad: i managed to put my foot in my mouth every time i opened it, and pretty much every action i took was a misstep. but yesterday was quite the opposite. and the braves won last night, despite giving the indians a 3-0 lead in the first few innings. in fact, if i were writing my own story, i would have put that in the chapter containing the last two days, so that anyone close-reading could have something about which to write an english paper:

The baseball game at the end of the chapter serves as a symbol that ties together the other events of this minor story arc...

I miss writing english papers.

--the management

knots, rocks, and words in between the lines.

my stomach is in knots. i want to crawl under a rock and hide for the next few days. stupid john, stupid john, stupid john.

thirty-one.

I began my birthday by going to a funeral: God loves to write irony into my life. I didn't know the deceased that well.
In other news, I share a birthday with William Butler Yeats. I just thought you, the reader, should know this.
I decided last week that, since I also share a birthday with the Olsen twins, and since I was here first, I should charge them rent or royalties or something.
Happy Birthday to me. I think my b-day present to myself will be a nice, afternoon birthday nap.
If anyone knows the Olsen twins, tell them they owe me twenty-one years worth of Birthday Rent. I'll be happy to take either cash or a personal check.

--the management

i'm on a roll.

i just owned a bunch of my friends at poker, thereby winning gas money for my trip to dothan this weekend. that was only the second time i've played texas hold 'em. i'm kind of proud of myself at the moment.
--the management

utility.

on faith and usefulness...
this is a subject that has been coming up quite frequently these days. i have a friend who recently wanted my opinion on her pursuit of artistic endeavors--muses she felt compelled to explore but, simultaneously, felt guilty for engaging, because in these endeavors the immediate gratification of feeling useful to the LORD was absent. She felt like her artistic vision couldn't be from God, because surely he would have her doing more useful things, like working in a soup kitchen, rebuilding New Orleans, going to Africa, etc.
The following is an edited version of the ideas I sent back to her:

Christians do not function properly for the glory of God when they measure their value along the lines of presumed utility. Conventional wisdom might lead us to believe that the abandonment of creative outlets and the dedication of our time to allegedly practical matters would please God more than the seemingly frivolous creation of art , but who is to say that efficiency according to mortal standards is what God is after? Time belongs to Him; He will give each of us enough time to complete our allotted tasks. Imagine a world where CS Lewis tried to be Mother Theresa. That's not a world in which I want to live.
Actually, the issue of use keeps coming up. You and I just have to remember that neither of us is God. And God knows that every person will not be saved. Either of us might one day be in the position to take a "useful" action and save hundreds of people, whereas we could have contributed to the salvation of thousands, if only we had felt comfortable being a part of something that, on the surface, appeared useless. God is God, and more likely than not, the most "useful" things will not appear very useful. The kingdom is counterintuitive.

So that's all I have to say about that. Well, that's not all I have to say about that, but that's all I feel like writing at the moment.