it's saturday night, i'm listening to the livestream of Coachella on Youtube (Bon Iver! Radiohead!), and i'm finishing up my notes for teaching at high school youth group tomorrow. this is an optimistic estimation. i will probably be up for a while still mulling things over.

writing an essay or story makes me commit words to a page and i stick by them; rather, it is that i can just put the paper down, walk off and not have to be there when someone reads it. my notes for public speaking are like an early draft of a story; and i always think of other things to say or add while i'm actually teaching and people are looking at me, i can't just stick to what i have done on the page, and that's when i start sweating profusely, if i haven't already been doing so. good times.

so it's about doubt, and wondering why God is silent with us sometimes, basically. it is infuriating when that happens, yes? among other feelings/adjectives. i have to say though, even though sometimes i wish otherwise, that i love following a God that is mysterious, one that i can't figure out or outgrow, than one that has just laid out everything for me in a checklist, so to speak. man, sometimes i'd really love a checklist, rather than feeling like i'm stumbling around in the dark. but where is the faith in that? i've got most of my notes, and who knows what i'll add in when it comes to me (hopefully not much) but this quote from anne lamott (who i think i love, among many reasons, because she writes about how bad she is at being a christian and i'm like, amen, sister)will make it in there somewhere:

"I have a lot of faith. But I am also afraid a lot, and have no real certainty about anything. I remembered something Father Tom had told me--that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns.”