Looking Forward And Looking Back

Life for me, yesterday, was just as much about the journey as it was the destination. On my nearly five hour drive up to Penland, I had an audio tour of some music that whetted my appetite of the thinking and digesting I’ve craved for quite some time. I began my trip with a little Over The Rhine. As rain sputtered lightly onto my windshield, slightly melancholic music was just what the doctor ordered.

When this song found its way to my speakers, I couldn’t help but find company in the words that painted my own picture for very own moment of coming/going. I am looking forward to something quite extravagant, leaving behind something quite nice. Either way I turn my head, I have a great many things to be thankful for.

When OTR expired, I switched gears to a little tour of the history of ska music, a la this guy. As the grey sky was having quite a somnambulatory effect, this compilation + a good strong cup of joe was a needed jolt of energy. Not only that, it reminded me that this period of life is a time in which open-mindedness is not just important, it’s prerequisite. I want to grow in new things, and I cannot do such without a heart and mind wide open to things I know not. (And by jove, turns out, I think this caffeinated music could certainly grow on me.)

When I hit the North Carolina state line, I toned it down a bit by amping up a bluegrass/folksy playlist I had stacked up on my iPod. Patty, Avett, Chris, Alison...their sweet twang sang me into the hill country and onto the campus of my new residence.

I hit this crossroads right before driving through the gates. I was reminded once again of where this all began. Even before then, this idea of a creative crossroads had been brewing in the mind of the Author and Perfecter of my faith.

I’ve been here on campus for just a few short hours, and have already been bathed in the uncontainable majesty of it all. My little cubby in the attic of the Craft House will be my new home and the place I lay to rest after full days of work.

I checked out the studio (which is without rival, the coolest I’ve ever beheld) and took a stroll around before sitting on the porch for a while and grabbing a sandwich at The Pines. I’ve already met a few other work study students, and am altogether enamored with how many stories are gathered here in this place. Lives from all over the American map are intersecting here. We all come from something and are coming to something, to learn great things, to study life through each other's eyes.

Along with my towels and linens, I picked up this sheet of paper that says:

The strange power of art is sometimes it can show what people have in common is more urgent that what differentiates them.

- John Berger

Here’s to eight weeks of being enveloped in the reminder of His beauty, to digging deep into an art that I love and to learning the binding qualities of shared creativity.

This is going to be one helluva good time.