So I've got my Bob the Builder backpack and my Dora the Explorer lunchbox. Everything seems to be in order for my first day of "big school."

At this point any other semester, I would be really stressed out. Not for any real reason, but simply because the first day of school is exemplary of something new and unknown; this guy has never done that very well.

But today--and this year--is so very different.

I knew New York did something to me; but I haven't had any idea what. I came home and felt nothing. I hoped it was just incubating.

Coming back to Oxford--a town that holds the whole gamut of feeling and emotion and memory for me--I discovered that nothing, absolutely nothing, felt right. I came back to a town that I felt was from a different life. The things I used to do, the people I used to hang out with, the places I used to go: they all seemed strangely distant.

For a week I have been contemplating why that is. Can three months change someone that much that he or she non longer feels comfortable in his or her skin?

Yes.

This year will not be another year in which I learn because I constantly screw up. I will approach God. I want to learn through His loving kindness. I don't feel comfortable worshipping in an all-white, uniform socio-political environment. I don't want to wear a tie and feel like there should be more. I want to sing and clap and dance and come before my God who exists in Truth and not merely in practice. I want more from God, which means I want more FOR God. I don't want to stand with brothers and sisters and worship and not take that worship out of the doors into every aspect of everything.

New York helped make me dissatisfied. And I couldn't be more thankful. Things are feeling reborn and new. Everyday is a miracle.


He Woke Me Up Again

He was, he was in the churchyard.
My father was in the first part.
He came, he came to my bedroom
but I was asleep.
And he woke me up again to say:

Halle Halle Hallelujah
Holy Holy is the sound.

And I hope, I hope you are tired out.
And I know, I know there is joy endowed.
But I was asleep,
And he woke me up again,
And he woke me up again to say...

Hold on, hold on to your old ways
Or put off, put off every old face.
And I know, I know you are changed out.
And I hope, I hope you're arranged out.
But I'm still asleep
And you woke me up again.
And I'm still asleep .
But you woke me up to leave.

-Sufjan Stevens