I wish that I had written "On Reason and Imagination." It was cool.

For the record, the subject has little to do with what I intend to write. But seriously, I remember reading "On Reason and Imagination" in Mr. Bennett's class and it was so...well...neat.

First and foremost, the reason I actually decided to write something is because i'm in the middle (well, not at all to the middle yet, but you catch my drift) of reading Donald Miller's Searching for God Knows What, partly because I liked Blue Like Jazz quite a bit (we don't agree about everything, but it's a fantastic book), and partly because Donald Miller will be the keynote speaker for Montreat Collegiate Conference 2007, and as a member of the planning team, I feel somewhat responsible to fairly well-versed in Mr. Miller's work, especially as I believe we are naming the conference "Searching for God Knows What," after Don Miller's book.

That being said, there's a part I want to quote. It's very insightful:

...I had always suspected language was quite limited in its ability to communicate the intricate mysteries of truth. By that I mean if you have to describle loneliness or how beautiful your sweetheart is or the way a rainstorm smells in the summer, you most likely have to use poetry because these things are not technical, they are more romantic, and yet they exist and we interact and exchange these commodities with one another in a kind of dance.

Don Miller's words actually remind me of another instance that had me wanting to reflect in this blog. I can't remember exactly what song was playing, but it's incredible to me how much emotion we (or, at least, I) wrap up into the music to which I listen. I mean, they say smell is most closely tied to memory (and I buy it: Montreat has a particular smell, for example), but surely music has to run a fairly close second, especially for some of us. I mean, put on some old school Vertical Horizon ("He's everything you want, he's everything you need..."), and immediately I will think of my strange friendship wih Megan Williams in eighth grade. Or play Ani's "Angry Anymore" and I will certainly think of Montreat and other elements of the summer after my freshman year. I can pretty clearly recall the intense emotional state I entered when we sang "In the Beginning" in the final performance of You Can't Stop the Beat! (our original musical revue) my senior year. Strange, isn't it? And beautiful, too? I think so.

Let me also record one more quick reflection. It's a good thing that not many people read this blog, because I honestly don't want this next thing to be a huge deal, but I do want to spend some time with it. You see, this past week, something made me think of Montreat – a youth newsletter or something – and it finally occured to me that I was too old to hang out at youth conference, there would be no college conference this summer (I had been blessed to be on the leadership team for that last year), and I am too young to be a small group leader at youth conference. So after five straight summers of spending at least some time at Montreat, it occured to me that I had no reason to do that this summer (though I would probably stop in on the drive back to Nashville, just to look around and feel God's presence in that place). Not forty-eight hours later (read: very soon after), I received an e-mail from one of the co-leaders of recreation at youth conference weeks three and four, and she told me that her partner in crime had needed to drop out and that my name had been passed along when she was looking for a replacement – all this to say that I will be co-leading recreation at Montreat Youth Conference weeks three and four and I am ecstatic! It's just so funny how all that worked out. Amazing.

I think perhaps my normal elevated tone is a bit absent from this post. And I am afraid I have said nothing profound. But it surely is nice to write about life, even if only one person will read it. Even if that one person is me.