The Purple Tie

A year ago today (well, thanksgiving), I was sitting here in this chair. The throne of thrones at ASC Desk in the commons. 10 am shift. I was wearing this purple shirt. I was wearing this purple tie.

I hate being told I'm wrong. And if you told me that everybody is like that, I would hate it. My life is how I run it, and that's how it is. I was born this way. This path was revealed to me. Blah, blah....

What do you do when a very credible source tells you you're wrong? How do I, as Eve 6 puts it, "swallow my pride"? Who wants to listen to criticism? What would life be like without it?

Well, no one would tell you that you couldn't do 'that'. What ever 'that' is. I would choose my own way, without recommendation, without Grandmotherly wisdom, without self-help books.

How far would I get?

When I was in 2nd grade, I got in some petty argument with my mother. I felt all this righteouness like I was owed something by her (or something). I decided on my own that I was gettin' out of there. I was hittin' the road. I was going to run away from home, from rules, from guidelines, from everything that was "holding me back". I grabbed my meager marbles-bag of a backpack and stuffed it with three shirts, a pair of shorts, and bread. I know, I know, that's a lot, but I planned on being away for 20 years. I got on my goliath bike with pegs on the back, and I started for the elementary school connected to my neighborhood. I lived in a small town called Jimtown. It's about 3 square miles in it's entirety. I rode my bike to the high school, down CR 22 to 5 points, and back towards my house on CR118. But I was not going back home. I was right, and I was not going to give them the benefit of showing weakness. So I went to play catch with my buddy Vella whose house was just down the road from mine. I had been gone long enough for my parents to get worried. After a couple throws, my dad pulls up and tells me to get home. How did he find me?! It's no worry, though. I had won. They broke before I did.

I was a brat.

I know this now, and most times I was aware of it growing up.

Who wants to be told they're wrong? Who wants to be told they are insuffiscent to properly care for themselves? Who wants to be told that cannot save themselves?

I do. I want to be told that. I want to be wrong. I want to be weak. I want to be vulnerable. I want to be insuffiscent. Why? Because that is when God shows his face. That is when he shows up, when a little lamb has a broken leg.

We all suck and need help. We need criticism so we don't blow our heads off and ruin everyone's lives with our natural stupidity. We need God.

Last year, in this throne of thrones at ASC Desk in the commons, sitting in this chair, wearing this shirt, and this purple tie, I think I wrote a blog going home or something. Every year they get better!

Congratulations and awesome shuffle time

Today will be a good day. It's the 24th! 24 is the best number.

I am more than half way through the semester and I have few things to say for myself. I am a little taller, according to my taller friend getting taller. I am learning discipline and responsibility at an EXTREMELY slow and alarming rate. I'm learning it, though. I couldn't say that last year at this time. I am working to survive, 9 to 5, staying alive. Chicago drains my wallet. I love clothes and being hot and stuff. It's so great, but it costs money. So do girlfriends. But Maggie is worth it. Oh yeah, Maggie. She's my girlfriend. She's a vegetarian fairy person, but very real and wonderful and is in favor of dating me. It's all good in this hood wif 'dat. I am 2 weeks from 20.  Nothing will change, except everything. I will LORD this 'not being a teenager' thing over my teenager friends like the London Nazi bombing. Too soon?

Godspell is also coming along. 3 weeks from now I will be the Son of God. In little ways. This show is going to be one of the most difficult performances I have ever undertaken. I'm sure that anyone who is in any kind of Passion Play (The final week of Christ on stage) has been brought to some newer understanding of what all went on there in that time. Maybe I will grow a little closer to my Savior. Maybe.

Resting in those great big Godly arms

-Jess

The Millenium-scapade.

Friday

12:18 pm

I'm getting changed after my photo shoot, looking at my phone like it was a heart monitor and I had a few minutes to live. I need to get to that 12:45 train. I grab my bag and I'm down the stairs. I do my routine pat down. I’ve got my phone, wallet, and computer. Now for my phone charger. Where's my phone charger? I drop my bag on a chair and grab sheepishly grab the next elevator to the 4th floor. I grab my charger and fly down the stairs, almost knocking down the poor soul who was unlucky enough to be in my fire trail. Grab the backpack and I'm off towards the El. My awkward run/jog is not helping my already frazzled look.

12:24 pm

I make it up the obnoxiously large flight of stairs to the train to catch the Brown Line right as it arrives. Luck be a lady tonight. Now the long trek to my safe haven: Randolph Street. It is taking forever and a century to get there. I am driving myself mad waiting after every stop, so mad that I convince myself to get off 6 blocks before the station and sprint because "I’m fast enough". 

12:35 pm*

The good news is I am fast enough. The bad news is that it is 6 blocks and it’s been 2 years and some change since my last basketball practice. I get back to my awkward freshman-that-is-late-for-the-first-day-of-class charade and I’m off. Zigging, zagging, huffing and puffing. I just took a deep breath as my legs are reminded off this while I type.

12:38 pm

Anyways, I make it to the station. It’s a few minutes till that :45 train and I am content and proud of my supreme hustle . I walk briskly through the heavy doors to the platform and look for that glory train to paradise.

*While Jess is running through Chicago, I am the train that is leaving at 12:35. He should have checked, re-checked, and then checked the schedule again.

12:47 pm

Dang it. 

A week later, still a blubbering mess.

More of this

One Act

“…DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'VE SPAWNED, SIR? She is a spider. She is a diabolically devious as Medusa. Her capacity for compassion extends only as far as her immediate periphery. She uses her charm in the same way the Borgias used poison. Her wit is an epic in trivia. She conforms to civilized conduct with all the morality of a traffic light. Her empathy is as deep rooted as her mirror. The lip service she pays to the social amenities has all the sincerities of a Hindu kissing the Pope’s ring. She is a pot of poisoned honey…”

from the play "Integrity" by John Patrick.

I silently performed this at my desk. I would suffice in doing that for the rest of my life.

I'm in an Advanced Drama class this semester. I am assigned to pick out a one act play, cast and direct it. I have never directed before, so I am looking forward to something new. I picked a show written by the same man who wrote the monologue above called "Fettuccine". It's a fast paced argument of a play between a husband and wife over the welfare of their only son. I have been blessed to have made friends in the "drama scene" here at Moody and I already have three pristine actors in mind. Hopefully I'll be able to successfully direct them while at the same time have them direct themselves. If I were a wagering man, I would bet that this is going to be a great semester.

Whenever I am reading, especially a non-fiction textbook, if something is under-lined or in bold, my head voice yells it. 

Memories from the summer

9/11

Tuesday, September 11th, 2001. I was 10 years old in 4th grade at Jimtown Elementary School. I was in Mr. Miller's class working on a project that I don't remember, but I do remember that at around 9 AM, our Principal, Mr. Stout, came on to the loud speaker and called all the teachers and faculty members to the office. No one told the students that day about what was happening in New York. I see that they didn't want to frighten us, but I am somewhat embittered still.

I got off the bus at my house on CR 26 and walked in the door to find my mother with tear stains on her face and an abnormally worried look in her eyes. "Are you ok?" she asks. I am clueless. "Uhh, yeah. Can I have a snack?"

""Do you know about the attacks?"

"...uhm, what attacks? No I don't know about any attacks."

"Jess, there were two planes high-jacked and flown into the World Trade Center buildings in New York, and two others elsewhere."

I didn't quite grasp all that had happened. Maybe it was better that I didn't fully understand. You see, I kow more about Amillenialism and Postmillenialism and doctrines on the book of Revelation at that age than I kew about football or legos. I may have lost my mind in fear of the return of Christ. Yeah, fear. I didn't want to leave. I sometimes still don't. But that's another blog post.

Throughout that day we were, like every other capable American, glued to the TV. It was such a confusing and fearful day, and many more were to come. My dad came home later that night and proclaimed that "Gas was 5 dolla'gallon in Indi!" and I think we had visits from family, maybe not.

Days passed, then weeks, then months, a year, two years, etc. We are now two days from a decade passing since that interesting day. 10 years. I went from a weird little boy to an almost drinking adult in that time. Children of fallen heros and victims that were born on the day or near to it are the age that I was when the attacks happened. Mind blowing.

I am sitting here at my desk in Crowell Hall at Moody Bible Institute basically weeping at the pictures of all the destruction physically and emotionally. I don't know why this affects me so much. Maybe because heroism inspires me. Maybe i am just a sorry sobby sammy. Whatever it is, I am proud to be, not necessarily an american, but to be apart of a nation. A group of people that are communally affected by the same thing.

I wish I was more proud to be a Christ Follower. Our version of Spetember 11th happened when Christ was seemingly defeated by man at Golgotha. The discipes and everyone else who was in the community of believers was devestated, searching among the ruins for his clothes, hist likeness, anything that would bring him back to them. For three days that were at a worse place than those who have lost family and friends in 9/11. They lost GOD. Utter darkness was with them for that time.

Easter morning came, and we were refreshed. He has proven himself God and we are now rescued from that debris.

There is not a redeeming comparison for 9/11, unfortunately. I wish there was. Families of lost ones are still lost and in need of Easter. Everyone needs Easter. Pray for them.

"...A few weeks later, our dog got hit by a snowplow and I forgot all about the problem of names. Until college, when I learned to play the guitar, and, as an exercise, started writing songs (very poorly executed) in the same way that Henry Ford produced the automobile: assembly-line-style. I wrote songs for the days of the week (poor Monday!). Songs for the planets (poor Pluto!). Songs for the Apostles (poor Judas!). And, finally, when all else failed, I started a series of songs for names. [...] Each piece was a rhetorical, philosophical, musical rumination on all the possible names I had entertained years before when my parents had given me the one chance to change my own. Oh fates! I sang these songs in the privacy of my dorm room, behind closed doors, pillows and cushions stuffed in the air vents so no one would hear. And then I almost failed Latin class, my grades plummeted, my social life dissolved into ping pong tournaments in the residence halls, and, gradually, my interest in music (or anything divine, creative, fruitful, enriching) completely waned. I turned to beer. And cigarettes. And TV sitcoms. And candy bars. Oh well! A perfectly good youth wasted on junk food! That is, until a few months ago, when I came across some of the old name songs, stuffed onto tape cassettes, 4-track recorders, forgotten boxes, forgotten shelves, forgotten hard drives. It was like finding an old diary, or a high school yearbook, senior picture with lens flare and pockmarks, slightly cute and embarrassing. What was I thinking?"


Sufjan Stevens inspires me. 

Tear it All Down

I am about to leave for another year at school. My life is moving forward, I am changing. I come home to my house that I grew up in, and recognize it for only that. It is not my home now. My new home is wherever I lay my head down to sleep, wherever my closest friends are, wherever God takes me. 
This song talks about the past, anything and everything that they have experienced and how it has changed them. 
I guess my life growing up would then be this house that I am tearing down. Leaving it all behind, looking ahead. 

Other Works...

Wrestlemania- Thoughts on God

Dumbo- More Thoughts on God

Fireside Chats...

This video was a project done in my Intro to Communications class. We needed to slect a medium or communication (video, improv comedy) and select an audience to show this to (youth group, 14-18 yrs old.).

We grabbed verses from Proverbs 31 (A Wife of Noble Character) and imagined if certain TV Sitcom wives from history embodied these characteristics.

We ran short on time and resources, so I filled in and inprovised the character of "Graham Wellington".

Enjoy!

Fireside Chats