I Whip My Hair

I’ve always been drawn to the wrong side of the tracks. Maybe it’s the fact that things don’t seem as polished on the wrong side of the tracks, the same way I find an old, tattered book much more interesting and valuable than a new one, or the the way a thin layer of dust on the shelf makes everything feel like home. Maybe it’s the fact that people seem more interesting on the wrong side of the tracks. They’re so much more willing to share their entire stories... because they have fewer reasons to hide anything. Or maybe it’s just the trains. I’ve always loved trains. It’s just that... on the right side of the tracks, there are too many lines to toe, too many appearances to keep up. Don’t confuse what I’m saying with right and wrong. I’m not talking about good and evil. I’m not talking about sin, necessarily. I’m talking about sometimes accidentally hanging a left when you should have gone right.

You see, Isaiah said that Jesus would come from Galilee. And Galilee was the wrong side of the tracks. Jesus couldn’t have come from Galilee... but he did. He became a light in the dark that was all around him.

I like the wrong side of the tracks because it’s darker. On the right side of the tracks there’s so much light. It’s beautiful, but it’s blinding... incessant. On the the wrong side of the tracks you have to work harder to see the light. You have look farther. But once you find it... you’ve never valued the light so much until you’ve been in the dark, the thick, black of nothing. It’s only in the darkness that the light starts to regain its meaning, it’s beauty, it’s necessity. I pray that all of us work to wander to the wrong side of the tracks in our lives, to bring light to the darkness, to help other see.

Shake The Dust

Sometime between screaming at the cows outside of Cozad, Neb., and now I heard singing. I'm always hearing singing.

Our new classes started today. There's so much work to be done. There's so much life to be lived. There's so many songs to be sung. And those things... those things are such beautiful reminders of how much I need to live in this moment, where melting earth and humming wind and booted feet hold everything together.

If I don't live here, I let myself live everywhere else. And I think over and over again about what's next. And I can't stand to think of what's next, because it means that all of this comes to an end. And I hate endings. I don't want this to end. I don't want this moment to stop. The teaching, the learning, the children... they've shook a sleeping part of my soul. And I hate how cheesy that sounds. But it sounds like it is. And that part of my soul is screaming at me to do more...

To love a world that needs loving.

To help a world that needs helping.

To save a world that needs saving.

And that might just save me.