there is great need for change in this world, and indeed, it is broken. even in this urban, sheltered world of chapel hill—where term papers, late nights studying for exams and the carolina heat are our easiest provokers—it is not easy to forget this. we are confronted by it when we read the senate bill 1070 and are gripped with the privileged life we lead or look at pictures of the oil spill in the gulf of mexico to realize at what price our unsustainable, insatiable need for energy comes at. racial profiling, bruises on the ocean. simply walking down franklin street and conversing with a homeless man is enough to jolt me out of my small world and realize how complicated this brokenness is, and how powerless I feel as to what a good response, a good dialogue about homelessness should look like.

but, friends, this is what I find hope in: that I have stayed up past two the past three nights, engaged in dialogue with my best friends—over drinks in the warmth of my light-spotted room, at a folk concert, at cosmic, at picnic tables, in the breezeway between davis library and the union—about these very things. to understand that I am at a university surrounded by others passionate about the very same issues, to understand that it is a privilege to be at this school but that with such great privilege comes great responsibility, to enjoy and soak in that wonderful learning and apply it to the world—this is where I see hope. we fully have the capacity to be broken, but we also fully have the capacity to change; and that is not something that is of us, but of a higher power, of love, of Christ. I don’t know what the appropriate response to homelessness always is, or immigration, or the energy crisis; or how to love people well. but I am grateful for a community where these questions are fostered and friends who will stay up half the night asking these questions with you and encouraging you towards change and the pursuit of Christ. scott and I discussed this the other night; that we came into this year fully sure of who we were and where our place in this world was, and that we have grown, but that that growth has taken us into a place where we do not know who we are or what our place fully is. but I like this; I am grateful to be at this place of question and prayer, this discussion of brokenness and pointing towards truth in the hours after twelve in the cool of the north carolina night.

song of the week: bon iver, a cover of “simple man”

and here, a shoutout deserves to go to brendan, not pronounced branden, o’boyle. for lending me his sleeping bag for something like two months, for being gracious about ambigous text messages, for telling me to write and for being an altogether wonderful friend.

happy birthday, asia morris! you are a remarkable woman with a remarkable nose ring.