about still not being over it

Here's something I love about music - it's totally cool with me being completely clingy.  

Isn't that the greatest thing? When it comes to music, you just don't ever have to "get over it".  You don't have to move on, you don't have to pretend like you've matured beyond the beauty or the meaning or the things it taught you to feel. 

There is something powerful and steady about the presence of beloved albums in my life.  They are powerful because they have simply stuck around.  Like James Taylor's "Sweet Baby James" or Billy Joel's "Glass houses" or Taylor Swift's "Red" or Ray LaMontagne's "Gossip in the Grain" or Coldplay's "Viva la Vida" or Death Cab's "Transatlanticism" or Phil Collin's "Love Letters" or Nickel Creek's "Why Should the Fire Die?" or The Shin's "Chutes too Narrow" or Lord Huron's "Lonesome Dreams" or Sufjan Steven's "Seven Swans"... there is never a reason for the music you love to be a thing of the past.  Crushes come and go, but music - music is for keeps.  I love that.  

I was thinking of this today because I listened to "Pure Heroine" by Lorde straight through two times in a row, and I have to say - I'm just not over that album yet.  It is so stinkin' good.  I somehow completely understand the way she describes growing up as the most fake and also most real experience a person can have.  

So here's to never never leaving behind the records we love, to clinging with desperate, affectionate fingers to all the songs that meant something to us once, to refusing to get over the sounds that made us and make us.  Here's to music being OURS and to being something we never have to get over.  

(ps. I'm extra fond of Buzzcut Season from "Pure Heronie") 

about ridiculous and gorgeous gifts

I have a really precious, valuable pair of earrings. 

They are red and plastic and were probably purchased for less than $2. 

A few years ago I was in an orphanage in rural Nicaragua painting an interior room. I started chatting in broken Spanish to a girl who lived there – preteen, bubbly, likely there because her parents couldn’t afford to raise her, or because they hadn’t even wanted to – and I noticed the round earrings she was wearing. 

Que bonita! I said, pointing to them.  She smiled, proud, said “gracias” in a small voice, and then she walked away from me. 

A few minutes later, as our team was rinsing paint brushes and preparing to load our bus to leave, she came up and tapped me on the shoulder.  Her right hand was folded in a fist, which she unclenched to reveal the round, red earrings that she’d been wearing.  She extended her palm toward me – para ti. 

For me. 

I stood there speechless.  Honestly, I wasn’t sure what was appropriate to do.  This sweet orphan girl was standing in front of me, gifting me with what was likely the most beautiful thing she owned.  When you’re an orphan, owning anything is a big deal.  I couldn’t possibly accept it.

A translator was standing near me and I was so flabbergasted by the offer that instead of responding to the girl, I grabbed the translator’s arm and said “What do I say here??” She told me that I should take the gift.  Culturally, it would be rude of me to deny her offer.  “Plus,” the translator said, “You will bring her joy if you take them.” 

Sometimes you receive a gift and it changes everything.  This strikes me as new today. 

It is easy for me to love the Resurrection.  I love it because I love a good story that fills itself with magic, and the Resurrection is the best story and the most magical.  It is the story that all good films or songs or novels try to tell – it is the story where things have reached their most dire state, and suddenly something changes everything.  The Resurrection took the concrete borders of death and crumpled it like paper to be tossed out in the garbage.  The Resurrection makes everything new. 

It is easy for me to love the Resurrection as a story, but hard for me to love it as a gift. 

When Jesus rises from the tomb and appears to his disciples, he tells them to “receive the Holy Spirit”.  He has come so that we might do exactly that – receive: take this event in as something done for us, something that we should now call our own. 

And gosh, sometimes I can hardly wrap my mind around how to accept that. How is it that Jesus would give up his life for ME? How is it that I, someone selfish and sinful and unworthy, should reach my hand out and claim that gift from his palm?

And yet, I must.  Because a gift is made beautiful only when it is received.  And the Resurrection is the type of gift that makes US more beautiful only when we claim it. 

I want to be a person who is uncommonly humbled by the event of the Resurrection, but not so humbled that I deny that it was done for me.  Because it was.  I know that Jesus would have died and risen again even if I had been the only human living.  And that fact stuns me and alters everything about my life.  But I believe it, and as difficult as it is, I am trying to stand in front of Christ’s open palms, and reach toward them, hungry for the gift of life he offers me, a gift that is ridiculous and gorgeous and for the taking.

about saying hi to famous people

One time, I messed up Robert Duvall's coffee order. 

During a few of my summer breaks from college, I worked in a coffee shop in my hometown.  It was the best job - except for the day that, as I said, I messed up Robert Duvall's order. 

He and his (super beautiful) wife live in the county I grew up in, but I'd never seen him around town before.  Anyway, one day it was slow and I was reading a book (best employee award to me!) and I look up and there he was.  His wife got a scone (beautiful people eat carbs too) and he ordered a tea.  I acted as normal as I could, said something dumb about it being nice outside (it actually had just thunderstormed) and swiped their credit card, imagining that it had recently been used to purchase private jets and several stacks of gold bricks.  After handing the wife her baked good, it was time for the tea. 

If you've never been a barista, let me fill you in on arduous process of fulfilling a tea-order.  Step one- get the tea bag, Step two- get the water.  Any idiot can do it.  Except for this idiot. 

I guess I was daydreaming about Robert coming back to the counter to tell me how great of a barista I was, after which I would crack some joke and he'd be so impressed by my humor and charm that he'd have me over to dinner, during which I'd bring a manuscript of some fabulous movie I hadn't written in reality yet, and he'd see all my star potential and introduce me to people in high places.  In all that imagining I somehow grabbed the wrong type of tea and then, oh it still hurts to say it, then I SERVED IT TO ROBERT DUVALL. And in that instance, my one shot to stardom died a painful death before my eyes.  He tasted it, kindly said he thought he ordered green tea, I turned the shade of a stop sign, and I went to get him what he actually wanted.  Goodbye, Mr. Duvall.  Goodbye, fame.  Secondhand Lions was really an excellent film.  

Since that day, I haven't really gotten much better at saying hi to famous people.  

This past weekend I went to an amazing conference (there will surely be thoughts on how unbelievable it was, but I haven't quite processed all of them yet) and there were some great speakers.  The final speaker, Donald Miller, was someone whose work as a writer falls so much in line with projects I dream of doing some day, and the language he uses to talk about faith always seems to speak directly to me.  The conference was a really intimate setting and so there were these great opportunities to meet the people who were sharing during the weekend.  After Don (pretending we're on a first-name basis) spoke, I went up and shook his hand.  I wanted to say "Don, thank you for talking about story and why it's important.  I've been thinking about that a lot lately, and your words have meant so much to me. Could we exchange e-mail addresses and be besties?"  Instead I said, "Hi Don, I'm Emily. Thanks a lot!" The end.  Cue long creepy smile and silence.  

Ugh. I'm just bad at this, y'all. (There was even ANOTHER instance with a different speaker my friend and I tried to chat with that exploded in awkwardness in front of our faces, but that's another story for another day).  And being bad at this is the silliest thing in the world.  But I was thinking about it, and I feel that I should actually try harder to say hi to more "celebrities".  Here's why: 

When I'm confronted by people I think are more "important" than me or more "talented" than me, I kind of lift them up beyond the definition of human.  I get clammy.  I feel I am not interesting enough to enter their presence.  I fumble over my words. 

But isn't it true that are all people are just, well, people? And while we should call out each other's talents and celebrate them and acknowledge when they have shaped our lives and meant something to us, we should remember that no one on this earth has more inherent value than we do.  ALL of us have value.  All of us have meaning.  Some of us do cool things that put us in the spotlight, and some of us do cool things that the world doesn't see.  

I want to be honored to meet EACH person I come in contact with, from the least known to the most.  I want to be humbled by them but in that to remember my own value and significance.  

So, if I ever run into Mr. Duvall in future,  I will be handing him a large mug of green tea with a smile. And he'll think I'm a freaky stalker and won't have a clue why I'm doing that, but it's ok.  I'll just tell him that I've been learning a lot from saying hi to celebrities.