Tea and Sympathy?

My room is a fairly accurate depiction of my life lately. Normally, it'd be rather tidy and organized, with all my clothes neatly stuffed in the closet and my bags thrown into a corner. My desk would be rather bare, with nothing more than my computer, my mixer, and a few cups ready to be used for an afternoon of tea or hot chocolate. Light music would be playing, and I'd perhaps be lounging around on my futon reading for class, or sitting on my bed looking up at the ceiling, writing entries more than once every blue moon, and peeking at the computer screen every so often to make sure I'm not misspelling things.

Instead, my trashcans are full, my bags are strewn across what little floor I have, the laundry I washed two weeks ago still sits in my hamper, with the laundry I have to do flopped in a pile right next to it. I have a few bottles of root beer sitting around my chair, and my desk looks like a small city, populated by computer equipment, magazines, books, CDs, cables and business cards. I'm typing everything from my desk rather than my bed because my second monitor fried and forced me to work like a normal human being rather than at my normal multislacking pace.

I spent yesterday and this morning hunting for swing dance tunes, helping somebody with programming homework, and swiftly losing my virtual buy-in in a game of poker (granted, I was looking for an easy exit, so it was nice playing my chips with reckless abandon). I've finished my application for my masters degree, and will know whether or not I get to stay here another year come December. Now I'm frantically working to get enough preparation work done for a senior thesis to satisfy my class requirements and essentially close the book on my wonderful major as I prepare to open a new one in the coming months.

There are many things I'd like to scribble down here when I have time and energy. But it seems that that's true for all who are reading this...I've seen nary an update out of anyone over the last few months, as we dance through the rhythms of our ever-changing lives. The silence makes me curious about what the last year has held for everybody. The posts that I have read make me long to talk with their authors...to share more than a passing word and a mere comment or two. I want to walk the streets with the people I've know and love, measuring time by sunsets rather than seconds, and have that wonderful indecision of being gathered and so idle that we may laugh at not being able to think of anything to do...may laugh at simply being together, without any set mission other than to look Father Time in the eye and say that our moments are to be spent in unison.

But for all I speak of fleeting time and frantic labor, I'm quite at peace. The year is turning out to be a comfortable one. The house I live in is a mixture of familiar faces and new encounters, oft-revolving around games of darts and late night trips to the shared kitchen. My room, when it's clean, has been a venue for shared prayer, for bible study, and the occasional cup of tea. I wish that it could be filled with the sounds of worship more often, but the one time I was afforded that luxury was a precious one. A single guitar, a thousand voices gathered into a group of six.

The fellowship that I have chosen to serve is a place of humbling. I'm barely involved with the leading of worship, and the stars have aligned in a manner to ensure that even without my involvement, there are other shepherds who will be able to lead the flock. I merely need to take care of the mixer. To some extent, that can admittedly be frustrating. I long to be up there sharing the load, steering the ship. I sometimes ache with a desire to see our group's worship be more than music...to someday hear a shout of unison, a thunderous cry rise above the melodies and testify that those on stage truly are the least of the worshippers in the building...some affirmation that our times of worship are more than just routine and ritual, more than a playlist of songs played out on a live stereo.

But this is still a new group, an amalgamation of four fellowships that is yet to figure out its grand mission. Worship is but a manifestation of the kinship among people...an communal act that cannot simply be grafted onto a congregation. So for now, I will pour my energy into building that kinship. The worship I long to see will eventually emerge, as one of many fruits forthcoming.

At the same time, I'm also blessed to have a venue for being a musical leader. I've been asked to lead worship at my church's high school group, training people both in their musical abilities and in their understandings of what it means to be leading their kin in worship. I'd love to do the same in my own fellowship...to have a small group of people every week just talking about what it means to worship, and what that signifies for those that lead others in it. I ask for your prayers in these two endeavors: that I might have the time and wisdom to bring this sort of teaching to my peers on campus, and also that I might be a role model for the high school kids that I'm leading. These are exciting times.

And with that, I'll close off this entry for now. I have an entire Thanksgiving holiday to be writing, and while most of that will be dedicated to scribbling observations on how open source computer software developers form relationships and collaborate on cool software, I hope to have a few hours in between with which to continue my recap of what I've been doing. I still haven't gotten to the mysterious 'relationships' phrase I dropped in my last post, and it would be rather cruel of me to remain silent on that matter now and leave everyone hanging, wouldn't it? ^_^

In the meantime, please feel free to drop me a question or two that you'd like me to answer. It can be related to what I've been doing, or it could be anything else under the sun--my thoughts, my experiences, my opinions.

Goodnight for now!