{Friday, November 28, 11:20 p.m.}

:kaleo:

imagine three swings attached to a beam which is suspended by a rope attached to its center. you sit on one of those swings, wearing a body harness clipped to the overhead beam, and suddenly the beam lifts up and back until you and your two other swing companions are swaying eighty feet above the ground – above the treeline where you can see right out to the ocean beyond. somebody holds the ripcord, says “one, two, three” and – you fall so fast you can’t even think or scream but your arms and legs are flailing and you can’t possibly be in the swing anymore except suddenly at a height of forty feet you being arcing smoothly out and it becomes the fastest, highest, longest swing ride of your life. at the same moment you realize you are gripping the swing with all your might, you also realize that you’re hysterically laughing. and you look at your two other swing companions who are proudly announcing that they did NOT wet their pants, and none of you can wipe the grin off your faces and in the same breath you say, “let’s do it again!”

now imagine fourteen Capernwray students and twenty Kaleo students who only met hours before joining in heartfelt worship and sharing what God has been teaching us lately. up to Your cross I crawl … now I am standing ten feet tall … Yahweh, Yahweh, look what You’ve done for me, hallelujah, look what You’ve done…

now imagine Michellie suddenly sitting up after taking a nap with her head in my lap on the 10 p.m. ferry and singing “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” and then saying “Let’s go outside.” so we did. and looked at the stars and started singing “look at the stars … look how they shine for you … and everything you do … and they were all yellow…” and marveled at how pretty the lights on our lodge and main hall are across the water as we came closer and how strange it is that this is actually our life now – Bible school on an island – and we skipped off the ferry onto the dock singing “how do you solve a problem like Maria, how do you catch a cloud and pin it down” in VERY operatic voices.

sometimes the best imaginings are the ones that are real. wish y’all could have joined me today. we had joy.