John Eldredge, I knew it!

Once, when my family and I were slalom kayaking between the 17 most ferocious killer whales in the Pacific as they tried desperately to eat us...

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/declassified/archive/2009/10/22/feds-crack-down-on-robin-hood-drug-cartel.aspx

No hard feelings, I hope. Just thought it was a smidge funny.

Alive

I am alive. Beneath all the excerpts, I am still here. Maybe soon I'll post something real again. In the meantime--

Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;

Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
Mount of Thy redeeming love.

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

Amen and amen.

excerpts, Doubting Thomas, Nickel Creek

"I'm a doubting Thomas, I can't keep my promises, because I dont know what's safe--Oh me of little faith."

excerpts, Ray LaMontagne "Jolene"

I still don't know what love is.

--Ray LaMontagne

excerpts, Counting Crows: "Gonna Get Me a Little Oblivion"

I got bones beneath my skin, and mister...
Theres a skeleton in every mans house
Beneath the dust and love and sweat that hangs on everybody.
Theres a dead man trying to get out
Please help me stay awake, Im falling...
Asleep in perfect blue buildings
Beside the green apple sea
Gonna get me a little oblivion, baby
Try to keep myself away from me

--"Perfect Blue Buildings"

excerpts, Saul Bellow, "It All Adds Up"

"At least we can stop misrepresenting ourselves to ourselves and realize that the only thing we can be in this world is human. We are temporarily miracle-sodden and feeling faint."

--Bellow, "The Sealed Treasure"

excerpts, Dostoevsky's Letters

Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don't say that you've wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a human being.

--Fyodor Dostoevsky, in a letter to his brother. August 16, 1839.