As I have been watching the Olympics these last couple of weeks, it's hard to ignore the seedy underbelly of the games. People will be quick to point out the rampant commercialism of the Olympics. Or the corruption that has been associated with IOC. Others will remind that thousands of men, women, and children on the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum were displaced from their neighborhoods to build sporting venues that will likely sit vacant after the flame is extinguished. How could you like the Olympics?

And I could write a song
A hundred miles long
Well, that's where I belong
And you belong with me
 -"Swallowed in the Sea" by Coldplay

Unless it's a parody, I probably could not write a song a hundred miles long. But if I wrote down everything that Elizabeth Anne Cox means to me, it would run to Nashville and back a thousand times.

Have you ever been stuck? I don't mean like just stuck in traffic. I mean spiritually, emotionally, existentially frozen in place (which, now that I think about it, there are actually times that feeling has coincided with being stuck in traffic). It is The Worst. In fact, it completely rejiggers your conception of what The Worst is. The problem is not so much in the situation. On paper this listlessness is not as bad as having your arm cut off in a freak chainsaw accident. Yet that internal recognition that something is off and things won't click into place no matter how hard you try; that feeling is pretty awful.

I still remember the pang of guilt when I bought my first "secular" album. I didn't grow up in a fundamentalist household, but I held myself to a high standard. In retrospect, it's funny. The Joshua Tree has more spiritual content than many of the Christian albums with which I grew up. But as I purchased that CD from my local Best Buy, I felt like I had crossed the Rubicon. I did not realize that I would find God on the other side.

Is it possible to love a bus stop bench? At the very least, I feel great affection towards one in particular. I wrote about this bench a couple of of years back. It's located near Belmont University in Nashville. I see it whenever I go for a run while visiting town. The thing I love is the graffiti on the back of the bench. Several years ago, someone sprayed the jubilant message, "Hello New World!" Seeing that always made me smile. It gave me a thread of hope. Is it possible to love a bus stop bench? If so, I have loved that bench.