I like the broken bathroom melodies because they remind me of learning to conserve water in Puerto Rico. I like listening to the boys profanely sing one of my favorite songs because it makes me smile and reminisce to high school. I like the brawling war for the lone washing machine because I have the opportunity to talk to people I would never normally see. I like that I have an over-sized pile of laundry to fold because I love the smell of dryer sheets. And I like that I am here at this exact place and time on a Friday night because I get to write about it.
I've found that when I choose to see through the lens of loving people, life becomes exciting. And the only way I can choose to love people is by letting God love me, because God is love (1 John 4:8). It's the concept of a Greek word for "love" called agápē. It refers to love that is unmotivated, that is not necessarily dependent on the loveliness of its object and that, in fact, confers goodness on that object: the beloved becomes lovely by virtue of being loved. I am only able to show love because I am loved by God.
I don't know how I got on a tangent about laundry and love when I was originally talking about Sequoia. But the thing is, I've found that excitement can be found in doing laundry just as much as on a mountain in Sequoia. We were talking about what makes good description in creative writing class the other day. I believe good description is composed of minute, abstract details, such as the several shades of grey (heh heh) in the threads composing a shirt. However, if the description of the threads does not point back to the grey shirt, it has not done its purpose. And further, if the shirt does not point back to the deeper message the description is trying to convey, no matter how beautiful the detail might be, it is useless. In the same way, both the smell of dryer sheets and the roughness of a Sequoia tree's red bark are details that point to the same God. You just have to read them in context of their deeper meaning to see the excitement they offer to the world.
On a different note, my roommate and I wrote a poem while falling asleep in the car while camping. There was snow outside, and we didn't feel like being encrusted in a hammock ice cocoon like the night before. This trip transformed my roommate from saying, "Whenever I write poems, I have to put on an alter ego of foo-foo" to this:
Fridged
by Julie Keck and Ashley E.
Numb. I feel nothing at all.
The sinister hum. Shallow, visible
Only on a moonless night.
They're on the outside
We trapped ourselves within
Bundled, calm.
Steam on the panes
Oh, how it pains to see the streaks
Of those lacking everything
Gaining nothing from the shadows
They fail to see.
It was actually a spoof on a legit assignment I had due that Tuesday, but when we read it dramatically to a music gem such as this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGeXU2GBuxg
It's actually not bad.
All that to say, I want to be a detail like a George Winston instrumental...the smell of laundry...the glinting feather on a bird's wing soaring over the Sequoia forest. All I want is for people to see those details proclaiming the reflected love of Christ, because He is the only beautiful detail in me.
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| The view from Morro Rock in Sequoia National Park, CA |
