I want so many things.

I want so many things.

Why do I want so many things?

I love people. I want to listen to them, cry with them, teach them, inspire them to be the selves they were created to be. I want to feed them and free them from prison and sing with them and help them find wholeness. I want to love them, to love them in North Carolina and Maryland and Minnesota and Gaza and Bangladesh and Tanzania. I want to reconcile us all with each other—the women and men, the liberal and conservative, the rich and poor, the young and old, the black and white and native and Latino and Asian and Arab and Jewish and everyone in between.

I love the arts. I want to write beauty and vulnerability and redemption. I want to sing with the spirit, to play the melodies and harmonies of hope.

I love this earth, this creation. I want to run and hike and swim and climb. I want to learn and teach us all to eat the fruit of the land rather than the factory, to find goodness and simplicity in the everyday processes of growing and eating and coming and going and waking and sleeping.

I love the church: its babies and nonagenarians, its liturgy and communion and song and scripture, its touchy-feely sharing and tearful prayers and most of all the God who is creating and recreating us all. I want to see the church willing to die and come alive anew.

I want so many things.

I cannot have or do all. This life, this in-breaking kingdom of God is too rich for me to drink it all in. And if I am to give myself fully to this world, I will have to choose: between the piano and the garden or between Maryland and Tanzania or between the incarcerated and the nonagenarians.

What I mean is that I have this one fleeting chance, as we all do, to run at the world holding all the love I can.

And when I choose where, specifically, to run, I will choose also where not to run. I will lose pieces. I will let go of the other dream, the other country, the other song. I will release them into the air and pray one day they come back and find me further on the journey.

I suppose in all truth, it is a good problem to have: the desire to love and create and heal more than is humanly possible. A heart too full to narrow itself to one passion.

The fullness in this heart, though—I just want to bring it to the right place.

I want so many things.

Detox

I have gradually become addicted to entertainment and communication technology. It started a couple years ago with a little TV to unwind after work. Since I started living in the middle of nowhere, it has grown into Netflix and blogs and Facebook galore, trying to find ways to connect. I no longer think, as I once did, that these technologies are inherently bad. I have seen how wonderful it is to catch up with old friends on Facebook, or to share real stories via social media, or to relax with a glass of wine and a comedy.

But as I was driving home the other night at twilight, with the windows rolled down, watching thousands of fireflies twinkle in the lush grass, I felt I was tapping into some beauty that I've been missing. I am tired of living in the numbness that I've made for myself. I feel like I can only concentrate in 3-minutes segments. I find my favorite books, and the Bible, boring. My thoughts are sometimes fuzzy and unable to be separated from the cacophony of images and voices in my mind. As I'm doing something enjoyable or clever or ironic, I find myself thinking in 150 word blurbs, thinking how I would present my experience to the world via Facebook or my blog.

I want to take a break. So I am going to attempt to remove myself for an experimental period, from most entertainment and communication technologies: mainly Facebook, articles and blogs (including this one; I need to take some time to write just for myself again), and television. Debating about the Orioles games, but following them online is lame anyway so I think I'll just get the scores from my brother! I will attempt this with some degree of grace and reason, in order to avoid the legalism and asceticism that I have so often tried unsuccessfully. I am planning to do a 7-day backpacking trip in August, and when I return from that I will reflect on the experience and may come back to the blog and Facebook.

 I wish it didn't feel so radical to half-unplug for 6 weeks (after all I'll still be on email, phone, google maps, etc). I know this is going to be difficult. I'm so accustomed to coming home from work, getting myself a bowl of ice cream, and flipping on the computer in order to read blogs or watch something. But I'm ready for this to be hard. I'm ready for a challenge. I'm hoping this time will give me a chance to reflect, to learn again how to pray, and listen, and process, and hurt, and be bored, and sleep, and wake, and go on walks, and sigh contently. To live my own life and think my own thoughts. I'll let you know...