Christmas Day

Sunlight spills through the trees and over the lake. It reflects the sky and turns it into a more wonderful world, a mirage world, and the water is the window through which we are allowed to look for a brief time and an unsteady glance. A field stretches up to the scuppernong vines and the trees beyond, speckled with the same golden light. A football flies through the air and lands in my brother's hands. Another pass misses the intended receiver and is caught by the magnolia tree instead. My boot slips into a patch of mud and I remove it quickly, wiping it off on the grass. Inside the house there is much laughter and leftover food, more of the former than the latter. A room downstairs sits empty, the ground under the tree bare. It's privilege was removed to a different room this year; it saw no smiling faces or shredded wrapping paper. The other room bears the evidence, shifted chairs and dust from new puzzle pieces, and a stray piece of tissue or ribbon here and there. Now the house is silent, most of the family has left and rest are resting, content with life and its quiet joy. I look around at the dying light outside, listen to the magazine's rustling. The lights of the trees on the docks of the lake are coming on and sending colors shooting down it's surface. There were not as many presents this year, but there was more family. There was sunshine and God's presence and the promise of a future. All in all, the best Christmas I remember, ever. Praise and glory to Him.

An Unbiased Opinion

I sat on the leather sofa in the living room, feet tucked under a blanket and a cup of hot chocolate in my hands and pondered how to communicate my thoughts to the world. They swirled in my head half unseen, like fish deep under water. Every now and then I would catch a glimpse, but before I could pin down more than a vague sentence, they were gone. "Deep thoughts," you could say. So that's why they're always so elusive.

The subject which I was pondering the communication of was in fact none other than communication. It's like a precious gemstone: beautiful, valuable, yet with so many facets. Like the gemstone it also has the ability to produce strife, if used wrongly. So often there is one way to view the stone, one facet to look through that will take our eyes to the very heart of the matter, the absolute truth of the mystery. But we are rarely shown that one facet. People decide on a facet to view the mystery from, and then they show it to me. They believe this, they are certain, and so I receive many certain opinions, all seen through different eyes. Whether it be a global issue, or the different angles of two of my friends, I am bombarded by countless differing opinions. They come at me through the media, through movies and books and music, through different cultures, through people I trust and don't trust, through the door, through the window, through my eyes, my ears, into my mind. There my mind must sort through them, wonder which ones are edited and how much they are altered. Which ones should be followed and which ones should be avoided, which should be framed and hung on the wall or put on the shelf for later or taken outside and buried?

My mind cannot make these decisions based on how each bit of information compares to another, for all of the information is suspect. None of it can be gauged based on how ardently the source believes it. Some of the sorting can be based on the source, for the only way it may be framed is if I trust the source. That is where the real decision making must reside. Who do I trust? I have made several choices over my life pertaining to this question, but even now some of them are coming into question. Thus a new dimension is added. I may trust one person on this issue, but not this one. The one being I trust and rely on completely is God. That is a decision I have made and renewed multiple times. I trust my parents on the majority of issues. I trust many of my friends on some of the issues. I usually trust the media on none.

This is best illustrated in an issue such as the recent US Presidential Election. I was bombarded with different views from every side. My parents said one thing, my relatives said another, and my friends said a third thing, a fourth thing, and a fifth thing. How was I to know the truth? Oh simple, people told me, go dig up the facts yourself. But still the fact grated on me that other people had prepared all of the these "facts." They were designed to take me in. Could I trust them? Many called themselves unbiased, but there is no such thing as an unbiased opinion. I must put my trust in something, so I chose God, and the Bible. But even that does not solve all of my problems. Nowhere in the Bible does it tell you who to vote for in 2008, or 2012, or 2016. The Bible itself is greatly open to interpretation. Do we read it from this view or that one? What does this verse mean? Should we take it literally or figuratively? What translation and version should we use? Who's interpretation should we trust? Once more life asks us to make these decisions.

It is my opinion that there is no such thing as an unbiased opinion, and that the very phrase is an oxymoron. Our minds must sift through the biases and make choices, based on whatever we decide is trustworthy. My hot chocolate is cold, my laptop's battery is dying, and my feet are falling asleep. I look out the window and conclude that I must come to my own decisions about who I will trust, and not rely on others to choose for me. Once I have those decisions made, it is a new puzzle of what to do with the results. But that is an entirely other problem. Like I said, my hot chocolate is cold.

At the Core

We often forget ourselves as we grow up.

I hit a point around my senior year of high school/freshman year of college when it became necessary to define myself, so I embarked on a quest to discover who I was. Exactly what made me? Was it my friends opinions of me, or was it my opinions of myself. In the end all of my wondering and overanalyzing left me with questions: Am I just trying to fit myself into a pattern that I drew for myself? Is the real me really what other people are seeing? So I embarked on a second quest, one to negate the first and return myself to the core of me, the center of my being. That quest led to freedom of self. No longer was I worried about what other people would think of me if I just acted the way I was. There are still occasions when I pull the mask out, of course. I avoid conflict like the plague, so often I will remain silent rather than vocally disagree with someone. This means that most people don't know what many of my convictions are, and if they do know them, they have discovered them through my lifestyle and not through any debate. I think it may be because of this that people sometimes form opinions of me that are mostly correct, but slightly erroneous, so then I proceed to do something that shocks them. The fact that they are shocked makes me wonder about myself, and once again I am forced back to the evaluation of myself and be sure that I am living by what I think and not by the thoughts of others.

I was looking through an old scrapbook that my mom had put together during my first grade year. Little things jumped out at me about my six-year-old-self, things I had forgotten. In one writing assignment full of short, simple sentences about how I loved school, the words "art is best" stood out. I looked at those words for a moment, reflecting how after all these years of school full of so many different directions and experiences, and the major I ultimately decide on is art. "Art is best," then and now. What stood out to me the most, however, was a little book I had done entitled "I Am Wonderful!" The project was based on Psalm 139:14: "I praise you because I am wonderfully made" and had me fill in blanks about the five senses. The very first one I saw said "God gave me eyes to see stars." The word stars was written in my large, sloppy, first grade handwriting in blue marker, and it seemed to stare at me from the page. I love the stars. I could stare at them for hours. I had forgotten that I also loved them as a child.

We often forget ourselves as we grow up. We are so influenced by the experiences we have, the people we spend time with, the books we read, the music we listen to, and the movies we watch. Sometimes we become so influenced by these things that we create an image of ourselves that departs from our core and we only remember it when we go back to our childhood and look at who we were when we didn't have to think about life the way we do today. Times are more complicated now, perhaps, but at our cores, we have not changed, we have simply developed.

Can you define yourself? It is an ongoing endeavor, I admit. For me it is an excessively simple story made complicated by an overdone title page and a confusing summary. The simple worldview of a child, the simple faith, unblemished by all of the questions of the adult world, this is what we all long to return to. Who was I at six years old? I was much the same person I am today, only today I am able to think more about who I am, and I am better able to share that with others.

Music To Walk To

I want music I can walk to
When I'm under clouds alone,
When I'm sliding on the bricks,
When I'm far away from home,
I want music I can dance to
When the sun is shining bright,
When my friends are all around me
While we're lighting up the night.

And I want songs that lift and fill me
Songs that carry me away,
Songs that whisper in my ear
To give me simple words to say.

I want music I can walk to,
I want cloudless skies and sun,
I want reasons for believing,
I want goals that make me run.
I want ink and pen and paper,
I want books that never end,
I want stars that I can touch,
I want roads that turn and bend.

I want music I can sing to
When the silence is too thick,
When the ground is muffled by the snow
When my mind is not so quick,
I want music I can run to
When I've got to get away,
When my life is spinning upside down
When I don't know what to say.

And I want songs that bring my memory back,
Songs that carry me through time,
Songs that leave me with a smile
And laughter on my mind.

I want music I can walk to,
I want cloudless skies and sun,
I want reasons for believing,
I want goals that make me run.
I want ink and pen and paper,
I want books that never end,
I want stars that I can touch,
I want roads that turn and bend.

Roads that lead me on
To an unknown destination,
Stars that bend themselves to earth
To shake the planet's deep foundation,
Books that travel on and on
So the story never ends,
Ink and pen and paper
That on my mind depend,
Goals that I may look to
And run as if to win,
Reasons to believe that I
Do have faith deep within,
Cloudless skies and shining rays
To open up my eyes,
And music I can walk to
Until my time is realized.

I want music I can breathe to
When the air is freezing cold,
When the water's filling up my lungs,
When the story's still untold.
I want music I can live to
When the stars are falling down,
When the last remnant is ending,
When the fire is all around.

I want songs to help and heal me,
Songs that wipe my tears away,
Songs that take me to a new place
Of joy and endless days.

I want music I can walk to,
I want cloudless skies and sun,
I want reasons for believing,
I want goals that make me run.
I want ink and pen and paper,
I want books that never end,
I want stars that I can touch,
I want roads that turn and bend.

I want music I can walk to,
Music deep and rich and true,
I want songs that I can sing to,
Songs I never even knew.