Here

So I am here in NY. It is almost midnight and I am sitting on a the couch bed in my grandmother's house (where I lived for a year before I moved to Ohio). She (my grandmother) just told me where the light is for the bathroom, and I told her, "I did live here for a year." And she simply, in all seriousness replied, "You did?".

I am looking forward to a nice and relaxing weekend spent with my family. The drive here was not so bad, it took me a little over eight hours. I got in early enough that I was able to stop by and visit with some of my friends from the youth group I worked with. Grabbing a really late dinner at the diner was a really nice way to end the evening.

This weekend will be spent hanging out with my mom, my brother who is coming into town on Sunday and other assorted exstended family members (including my grandmother, who at least remembers who I am).

May God's peace be with you . . . and prayers for Palmer.

I suppose I have been a deliquent blogger as of late. It seems I don't post all that often and when I do post, I really don't say much. The excuses of life has been really busy and I am not really sure what to write, seem old and trite. However, I feel like I am always moving from one task to the next and when the last task is done, I find myself going to straight to bed.

In the midst of all the busyness, life has been good. I work a lot, but I work with good people and good kids, so I don't really mind all the hours I spend at NorthWest. In fact, I really am enjoying getting to know the people I work with . . . they are simply good, fun people, who make work more enjoyable for me than they probably know.

In other life news, I am going to be able to go to NY to visit for Memorial Day Weekend. My mom and brother will be coming into town (Middletown - the town I am from) as well. I am looking forward to some quality time with my family, cause they are really cool people.

Also, I am looking for my vocation, so if anyone knows where I can find it, let me know. Actually, I am not really looking for my vocation, but I have been giving a lot of thought to how my vocation needs to play out in my life, how it needs to be a part of the formation of my life. I am not looking for all the answers or for a yellow brick road to appear to I can follow it into my future, I am just looking to be open. I want to be aware, to catch what God is speaking to my life. I know part of that will come when I commit more deeply to the spiritual disciplines . . . and I know that "when" needs to be now. It would seem I "know" a lot more than I want to admit, because "knowing" means I am responsible to do something with the knowledge. Doing something often means work . . . expending effort . . . going above and beyond the living of every day life. But I suppose it is about time that I do that in a serious way.

I suppose that is enough writing for now, I will close with a random thought I had in the midst of writing this post.

Random Thought :
If I can find myself completely in the love of God, find my whole identity, my safety, my security in His love, and not in the approval of others, I will be able to serve others and love them more deeply than I ever thought possible. Because if I am not depending on them for my self-worth, I will be able to be more self-less in the way I treat them. Which may be easier said than done, but it is very much possible.

I have feel as though the days of my life are rapidly moving forward and I am standing still.

And I am not so sure what to do about that.

In The Name Of Jesus

Some words from Henri Nouwen :

"The leaders of the future will be those who dare to claim their irrelevance in the contemporary world as a divine vocation that allows them to enter into a deep solidarity with the anguish underlying all the glitter of success, and to bring the light of Jesus there." ~pg.35

"Knowing God's heart means consistently, radically, and very concretely to announce and reveal that God is love and only love, and that every time fear, isolation, or despair begins to invade the human soul, this is not something that comes from God." pg. 38

"The desire to be relevant and successfull will gradually disappear, and our only desire will be to say our whole being to our brothers and sisters of the human race, 'You are loved.'" pg.41

"A mystic is a person whose identity is deeply rooted in God's first love." pg. 42

"The central question is, Are the leaders of the future truly men and women of God, people with an ardent desire to dwell in God's presence, to listen to God's voice, to look at God's beauty, to touch God's incarnate Word, and to taste fully God's infinite goodness?" pg. 43

"To be such a leader, it is essential to be able to discern from moment to moment how God acts in human history and how the personal, communal, national, and international events that occur during our lives can make us more and more sensitive to the ways in which we are led to cross and through the cross to resurrection." ~pg.86-87

"The Christian leaders of tomorrow will have to be theologians, persons who know the heart of God and are trained - through prayer, study and careful analysis - to manifest the divine event of God's saving work in the midst of the many seemingly random events of their time." ~pg.88

"Somehow I have to trust that God is at work in me and that the way I am being moved to new inner and outer places is part of a larger movement of which I am only a small part." ~pg.19

I feel as though I have a lot that needs to be said and yet nothing to say at all.

I have not blogged in almost two weeks . . . shame on me . . .

The last two weeks have been good, tiring, full of life and living. To go into the details of my day to day events at this point would seem a bit futile. However I will say they have been times of questioning, making various important decisions, spending time with some really quality people and simply enjoying my life. In other words, life in the last two weeks has simply been normal.

Tonight I am tired. It has been a full weekend, one that I am sure not to forget for a long while.

Peace to you and yours this night . . . and don't forget to pray for Palmer . . .