T-Shirt #2.8.d

This snippet, "seek out time to be still" coincides nicely with a beautiful poem my friend at White Open Spaces posted recently, a response to my fasting/sabbath post from a few days ago. Check it out here.

Now, the final installment of essay 2.8.

When you are 18, society will consider you an adult, both legally and figuratively. You can keep those things that work for you and discard those that don’t. You might decide to become an ultra-conservative right wing Christian (although I truly believe such a position is fraught with loads of cognitive dissonance – look it up, you’ll understand). If you save that $160/mo you can even buy a pretty decent car. I hope you’ll choose a car free life, but I’ll understand if you don’t. For what it’s worth, here are a few of the things I hope you’ll learn these next few years if you already haven’t.

I hope you learn to depend on your friends and that they learn they can depend on you. I hope your relationships are deep. I hope you learn to weigh the satisfaction of an activity against the effort it takes (in human power) to get there and back. I hope your actions match the expectations of your spirit rather than appeal to what everyone else might be doing. I hope you learn to be comfortable with your thoughts and seek out time to be still. I hope you find people who love you because of who you are and not because they ascribe worth based on your possessions – where you live, what you drive, how you dress. I hope you surround yourself with a community whose deliberate actions serve to make a positive difference for the generations who’ll be here long after you and I have died.

And I hope you are always aware enough to know that minus is the new plus.

With much love,

Dad

p.s. for future reference - if you are going to concoct a story so your girlfriend can come home with you, I really need to be in on it.