"Everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms--to chose one's attitude in any set of circumstances."
-Victor Frankyl, Nazi concentration camp prisoner and writer of Man's Search for Meaning

I played some music at the funeral of a great man today.
I didn't know him but the preacher said this about him so he must have been great:
"He loved his wife. His cooking always made people come to the table. He used things to love people. He never used people to love things."
Quite the life recap.

What am I doing?
I often stand leaning on the shower wall soaking up the warmth and the thoughts that both seem to either swirl down the drain or dry up after I step back into preparing for the day ahead.
However, two thoughts rained down on me that I don't want to let run away today.

First Thought:
How much water I waste taking 7-30 minute showers is really just as wasteful as my dad has been telling me since I was in the 8th grade. For some reason I pictured how much water was really dumping out of the shower head and now that I'm twenty-three years old it has finally sunk in. It really is ridiculous to stand in the same place half-asleep (sometimes more than half) for thirty minutes. This is me admitting I have a problem.

Second Thought:
My "small" and "insignificant" disobediences create habits. Habits create default settings in the brain. Having disobedience as a default setting scares the life out of me when I picture myself in times of crisis. Cliche for the day...every decision matters.

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved."-Jack Kerouac

These girls are mad.

Deuteronomy 15.
What do you think about this idea?

The Lodging.

The Pool.

The Leaders.

The Sundance Kids.

The Reason.

Off we went to the land of big skies.
It's the kind of place where the wind carries holidays and memories on its back.
The views declare there own prayers as you mumble from your humble perspective.
The heavens are a tent for the sun.
The open plains give space for the perfect laughs to bounce on for miles.
The phrase, "Isn't that crazy!" isn't crazy anymore.
"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy," is a prayer prayed out of fear as the mountains bury you and the rivers silence you.
Shadows run up the mountainside as the sun says goodnight.
Thank you, God, for meeting us and for Psalm 43:3.

Is God defined by love or is love defined by God?

I'm leaving for the wild for a few days.
The updates will cease for a week or so, but will return with some mountainous inspiration.
Now off to the top of the world; or at least as close as I can afford to get.

Let's all do one thing to make this week remarkable.
Then we'll share the stories.

"The West"
By Lauren NeSmith.

"Herbert"
By Lauren NeSmith.
She's the hottest artist in Athens.
The script is German for the meeting of suspension, invisibility, and reality.
This is one of her most recent prints.
Limited edition.
She would never sell her stuff so I've stolen it to sell it for her so I can ask her out on dates.

It has taken too long, but what was once a sketch is now finished.
Well, almost finished.
It needs a little wood filler here and there and some stain to finish it off, but I just had to set some stuff on it to see if it would hold.

A day of mercy.
In a previous post I stated that I would be praying one simple prayer all day on July 30th.
We'll the 30th has come and gone so...

The band had our big break and got our first single played on the radio.
A family member was miraculously healed.
My car started working again.
I beat my record 5k pace.
And I found five dollars.

Actually none of those things happened.
So did my day of prayer work?
Was God more on my side because I was trying to be more on his?
Nothing really even changed, right?
Except I think I may have changed...a little.

Two moments where I saw something that I normally would have missed (isn't that all a miracle really is?):
The first happened when I was sitting under the umbrella on the dock in the rain with my grandparents after a swim. The bathing suits were on and our towels were wrapped around us so we wouldn't get wet. It was then that I thought to say the prayer again. In a way I've never felt before, I realized how frighteningly similar we all are. We are all so deeply connected in our need for mercy. My grandmother, myself, the family across the cove; we all sit in the exact same condition when you look at us in light of the prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy."
The second was on the backroad drive home that night. I was thinking about how crazy it's going to be to have kids. I'm going to have a kid someday? Most likely. Insane. Then I thought of the prayer again. I thought about how it applies to my not-yet-existing-on-the-planet kids. They need mercy like I have needed mercy. Then I started doing something I don't do enough. I started begging. I started begging for God to have mercy on my kids. They need you, God.

After the conversation in my head I looked over at Lauren staring out the truck window into the black and thought, "This prayer needs to stick around a while. Maybe I'l keep this thing going for more than one day." So it has stuck around and I hope it never leaves.