Seven people. Good food. Good movies. Good music.
This. This is called jamming. Or in layman's terms listening to some very talented fellows violently send everyone in a 50 foot radius into a coma of amazement.
Things like this have slapped me silly by the Eucharisteo again. The unwavering gratefulness that is not derived from circumstances, but because I see mercy and grace constantly evident in all of our lives.
These run ins with the beautiful things, the music, the crafting, the wit, they bring me back to the unhurried pace of living in thankfulness. It's been a full two weeks, vacillating between soaking in the grace upon grace in my life and getting comfortable and expectant with it.
Fourteen days of laughing, napping, annoyance, conversations, quiet. Fourteen days of being immersed in each other. Not every moment has been the best, but every moment is a grace.
Grace: I have to work through my anxiety and insecurity of people getting "too much" of me and them no longer wanting to be around me.
Grace: being invited into other people's (albeit sometimes blaring) creativity
Grace: the free kind of laughter
In the monotony of even two weeks of repeating events, I lose sight of it. My eyes cloud over with entitlement and insecurity and those begin to supersede the gratitude.
Today I am resting in the gratitude. In the fact that the Gospel allows me freedom to give up my right and not hope in friendships, but to only gain from them and not have to lose, to be in the hard with one another and not become weary of it. I have been given everything I need to embrace the freedom of being around these people, unhindered and in the full face of gratefulness. In hard, beautfiul, nuanced community. And I pray I can stay here longer this time, remembering to insist for this mindset, to pray and beg to operate only under these pretenses.
I want to remember this, to document the reality of sweet friendship. It's why I have this blog. Not just to process through thoughts, but to remember. For the fleeting to be a little less fleeting. To collect moments.
Keep your face always toward the sunshine and the shadows will fall behind you.
Walt Whitman
