Memories from a Shore
Right Away, Great Captain!
Andy, again, of course.
Memories from a Short - Right Away, Great Captain!
June 2013
9 posts
Eye Saw The Sun †††: Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your... →
eyesawthesun.tumblr.com
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them…
May 2013
37 posts
Play
“Character, like a photograph, develops in darkness.”
—Yousuf Karsh (via lalaladylove)
“Being in love isn’t chaotic, but at the same time it isn’t assumed. It requires work, some days, and commitment everyday. You start to realize you’re a selfish person, and unless you allow God to break down that pride bug inside your head, it just won’t work. I think my generation has this idea, at least what I’ve seen, that love is some magic, where you get sucked up into this whirlwind that’s inexplicable and infallible, but that’s attraction, you know. That’s part of it. I think that’s a piece of it. I mean, I hate reading books after people who underline. I can’t stand it, but I’m reading “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” right now, and Rachel read it before me and marked it up sparingly, and every time I get to an underline it’s the right words that should be underlined, like she saved her pen ink for the lines that actually mattered, which no one else does. Some of them I would have marked on my own, and some of them I never would have thought to underline, but I’m glad they are now. All that is to say I’m attracted to Rachel’s mind and how she thinks and what she sees. God is somewhere inside all these lines of this play, even though Edward Albee might not have meant to put him, or his absence, there, but she catches it every time. It’s what first got me about her all those years ago. But that’s not love. That’s just what gets us talking. Our minds and our passions line up in all these ways, and that’s a magnificent thing to have, but that could happen between any number of people whom I will never love. We used to have this mindset that love just happened. That, because we were attracted to this and that about each other, it was a sure shot, and we failed miserably. But our time apart taught us you have to work for anything worthwhile. That love is a choice, an ongoing act of commitment. It’s learning to compromise on the things that don’t matter and standing up for the things that do. It’s paying attention to how you talk, and realizing that you’re wrong a lot. We still have a while before we get to that full embodiment of love, we’re working towards it, and Rachel likes to jokingly remind me, “If you like it, then you should put a ring on it.” But we won’t rush it. Let me tell you, it’s amazing to have a partner in crime. It’s one of the greatest blessings in the world to be able to sit with her and sense completion in direction and mission. Let me also tell you that it took work to get here, and we’re still working to get where we want to go. We open the doors to Grace, because we have to. Because without it, we’ll be dead in the water. We’re learning to take ourselves less seriously, to pay attention to our selfishness and kill it, to speak boldly but with humility. We know what it’s like to pretend that love just happens. That attraction, in its minute weight, could mask itself as the fullness of love. But it doesn’t. We’ve been there, long ago, and we’re not going back.”
—Christian Tenbrook
