Easter in the Fall

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A few weeks ago I followed my dad out into my mom’s garden when he went to pick the remaining vegetables. Most of the plants were dark and bent and dead. The okra was half the height it had been, and the beans’ home-built trellis was tilting with mad exhaustion. The tomato vines curled blackly around their stakes and a few last over-ripe tomatoes, glowing orange-red, hung almost oozing off of them. Ever since then I have wanted to write this entry.

The changing of seasons always puts me in an Easter mood.  Each time the earth shifts humors in its cycle of yearly sinking down into somber sleep and rising up again, new and singing, I think of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ line: “There lives the dearest freshness deep down things.” This is both one of my God’s favorite party tricks and the grandest foundation of his character: he continually brings life out of death. Brown leaves rot and carpet the earth, so that fresh green life will leap out, nourished by death in its last decay. The withered hand is stretched out, whole again. Four-days-entombed Lazarus comes forth, trailing his grave clothes behind him.

And so for me, it is Easter weekend.  It is always Easter weekend. Christ died and rose to life, and so, in miniature, must we, along with the rest of his creation.  I am not saying something new. I’m saying something very old. Not only do we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, but we, with Christ, are baptized into death (Romans 6). But then, on the other side, (hear this,) then we come up out of those strange pathways and that dreadful river and look down to find our feet new-shod with the gospel of peace, fit to face the day.

The old self must crumble and rot, so that the new self can rise and grow. Death is the only way through to life.

Eventually, when we rise up out of death, clinging to our Savior’s hand, we will turn and see that the old dark valley and those rushing waters are gone and dissolved for good and all: that Donne spoke true and death has died. Our feet will no longer be new-shod, but new feet entire, whole and well, fit to face eternity.

Books and Days

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Sometimes friends tag you in things on Facebook and you’re busy with teaching and the rest of life, and then one day you look up and notice that weeks have gone by and you now look like an incurable jerk, because you couldn’t find the three minutes to tell these nice people what books you love and what small things you’re thankful for. So this post is to rectify that, (and also to let me be more long-winded than the Facebook world might be prepared for.)

THEREFORE:

Here are ten books that have stayed with me or shaped my life in some way. Please be aware that this list is almost hilariously non-exhaustive, and also that I’ve recommended every single one of them on here before, so if you’re looking to be surprised, you’re going to be sorely disappointed.

  1. One Morning in Maine, Robert McCloskey: When my parents read this to me as a child, I could taste the whole thing: the blood in her mouth when she loses her tooth, the mud on her fingers when she sticks her dirty fingers in to search for it, the chocolate ice cream at the auto-shop, the promise of clam chowder for lunch.
  2. The Penderwicks, Jeanne Birdsall: I got this one for Christmas when I was about twelve. As per usual, my family was driving around the Midwest and after I finished it, I insisted on reading it aloud to them, and beginning to make notes for a future film adaptation.
  3. The Mennyms, Sylvia Waugh: I read all five of these as an older kid and adored them. Then I re-read them last summer, while beginning work on my novel. I stayed up till two in the morning finishing the third one and crying messy, slobbery tears about the existential fate of a family of rag dolls. It was worth it.
  4. I Like You, Sandol Stoddard Warburg: This is a book for sharing, and sharing, and giving away. Order it now, sight unseen. You won’t regret it.
  5. Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies, Marilyn Chandler McEntyre: This was a high school graduation present from my fifth grade teacher. I carried it around all summer, and even dropped it in a slimy spillway while on a walk at my grandparent’s. It got as close a book can to becoming my best friend.
  6. The Hiding Place, Corrie Ten Boom: This is such a book for re-reading. Every time I do I take a deep breath and say to myself, “Oh, so that’s want it means to follow Jesus, yes, of course, of course…”
  7. Bleak House, Charles Dickens: This book contains some of the most heart-rending examples of how not to love those around you, how not to be charitable, how not to show pity. I’ve seen this book make both my parents cry. (But it’s worth it all when Miss Flite sets her birds free.)
  8. Wit, Margaret Edson: This play, which I saw Emma Thompson do on screen long before I read it, is so much about grace: grace in words, grace in action, grace in suffering, death, and life. Also, it’s wonderfully simple and morbidly funny.
  9. True Grit, Charles Portis: This book makes fourteen-year-old girls seems so cool. And it reminded me, when I needed it very much, of what good writing really is: making sure every word has been put in each sentence for a purpose, to do a specific job. It’s really one of the most sublime pieces of first person narration I know.
  10. The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway: There are times when being an English major can slowly sap the joy out of reading. But this was assigned for a twentieth century novel course I took senior year, and I remember finishing it up (eating lunch just before class time in the overcrowded cafeteria at a table full of strangers,) and feeling like my heart was about to burst and turn inside out like a kernel of popcorn. It was that good.

AND:

Here are five days’ worth of three things I was, and am, thankful for. (I promise I kept track throughout the week.)

  1. Monday: students who talk too much, a mother to take walks with, and Skype and speakerphone (especially at the same time)
  2. Tuesday: a sister who will call me from a concert so I can hear a favorite song live, pot roast and this poem about it, and the fact that on some days my job consists of me telling students about the patience of God over and over again
  3. Wednesday: texting…because now that I have it it’s actually not so bad, Krispy Kreme for breakfast, and the way old friends can become new friends
  4. Thursday: students who write too much, Edwards tests and their continuing legacy in my life, and peanut butter M&Ms
  5. Friday: teacher workdays, the fact that we have been promised grace for grace in Jesus, and homecomings, of all sorts

So there you have it.

(Who am I kidding? This didn’t take three minutes….)

The Here and Now

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All through college I heard so much about the importance of place, of the dirt beneath your feet, of opening your eyes as wide as they’ll go and looking watchfully at the walls and horizons which surround you. And now I’m back in Greensboro, probably for good. Back in the muggy air that hugs me, sleeping in my childhood bedroom, getting up each morning and driving to the place I could drive to in my sleep. I love security, so in my eyes, all of this is very good.

But time is place too, in a sense. A place I can’t return to. I lie in bed at night, and remember that there is no big sister on the other side of the room to keep me awake talking endlessly about her day. I now meet friends for drinks on the same corner to which I used to walk to pick up ginger ale when my mom had the flu.

During teacher workweek at Caldwell, I sat in almost the exact same spot in the lunchroom where I used to pour chocolate milk all over my pizza to impress the other second graders. My new desk is in the back corner of a classroom which I routinely bathed with tears over Geometry and Precalc. And I remember standing up near the whiteboard there during play practice one day and teaching ourselves how to use chopsticks, with whiteboard markers. I can look out the doorway into the hall and see the locker I stood next to hyperventilating when my friend was rushed to the hospital at the end of one school day.

The room I teach in is the same one in which, during my freshman year, I used to sit in the back corner during class, with a messy spiral notebook, the smudged pencil which was the beginning of my first novella. When I stand to face my students I stand in almost the exact spot where, on the night of my senior prank we put a little tub of baby chicks. I remember curling up on the hard floor with my sweater a few yards away and trying to sleep, while they cheeped softly for hours.

Sometimes I feel a little like Ebenezer Scrooge standing and watching the jumbled ghosts of my past. Don’t take the metaphor too hard, though. Because while those shadows play there are very real people in front of me with their own, quite solid pencils and spiral notebooks in their hands. And behind me there are completely tangible whiteboard markers that I really ought to be using.

And so I teach and I think about the shadows and the reality and the way this reality will soon fade into shadows. And then I think about the great reality, which is this: God is faithful. God is faithful to have brought me back to place in which I cannot ignore His perpetual goodness to me. I grew up in here and every corner is marked and scuffed by my fears and aches. I look at them and I see Him. In the memories of my hardheadedness, I see His patience, of my cruelty, His sacrifice, of my pains, no matter how small, His abundant and overflowing grace. I see His faithfulness in each place and each time, in each here and each now.

And so tomorrow, I continue to teach history. Not my history, thank God, but His. Always His.

 

 

Sixteen Women Worth Your Hero-Worship

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This list came about in two ways: first, I was re-reading Jane Eyre. She mused on the inequity between the sexes, and I thought, Go, Jane, go… Then, a few chapters later, she calmly observed that beautiful, soulless Blanche was simply “too inferior to incite jealousy,” and she had me. I watched her forgive her terrible aunt, love and leave Rochester, survive on barren moors, find a family, become independent, resist (sort of) the manipulative advances of St. John, and, at long last, return to care for and marry her former master. I wanted to meet her, to befriend her, to be her. I thought she was the coolest, most self-possessed person I had ever met and she only existed in a book.
The other thing that happened was that I found this list. And I was very, very disappointed. I know, I know, it’s Buzzfeed, what did I expect? But really: about two-thirds of these women I don’t even like at all, and, as for the rest of them, well, I like their movies? But that in no way makes them worthy of large chunks of my admiration and emulation. Which, after my experience with Jane, was what I was searching for.
I believe that it is important to have heroes. (I’m twenty-two and about due for that revelation.)
Not just literary heroes, like Jane, but tangible examples of what it means to live a good life, to do what you can with the time that’s been given you. People to remember, to revere, to consciously try to live up to.
And if you ask most people from the Christian circles I grew up in to name their heroes, they’ll usually give you a splendid list. And that list is going to be almost entirely comprised of men. Great men, good men, wise men, and very few women whatsoever. It is true that well-behaved women rarely make history. For centuries, a woman could expend all her mental, physical, and emotional efforts to serve God and love those around her, and still her name would be forgotten just a generation or two after her death. Wallace was right to say that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, but history has done an extraordinarily poor job at remembering the names and deeds of those to whom those hands belonged.
So what follows is my little attempt to begin to fix that inequity in my own mind, at the very least. If asked specifically for female heroes we’re likely to name our mothers and grandmothers, aunts and teachers. It is a good thing to recognize the virtues of those around you, particularly those who raised you, and I don’t want to discourage that in the least. But there’s something to be said for the larger-than-life quality inherent in someone who has had national or international impact. To adore and emulate the same virtues in the same person is to build kinship, affection, and understanding with people you have not met yet and may never meet a tall. Literary heroes will serve this office in a sense, but not with the same solidity as people who have actually lived. We need this combination of the actual and the mythic in our heroes. (Those were, after all, the qualities of the Man who died for us and then rose again.)

1) Deborah 1200-1144 BC

Judge of Israel. Dispenses advice under a palm tree. Admonishes the commander of the army for his cowardice. Drags him out of bed so he will go and fight. Rejoices in victory, and writes a song.

“Let those who love Him be like the sun when it comes out in full strength.”

Read: Judges 4-5

2) Esther 400’s BC

Orphaned and then adopted by her cousin. Grows up in lower echelons of society. Becomes queen through her charming personality and God’s providence. Risks death to save her people. Prepares a banquet in the presence of her enemies. Obtains justice for all concerned. Establishes Purim.

“And so I will go to the king, which is against the law; and if I perish, I perish!”

Read: Esther

3) Eleanor of Aquitaine 1122-1204

Wife of two kings, mother of three (along with five other children.) Queen of both France and England, at different times. Fills her courts with troubadours. Imprisoned for supporting her sons over her husband. Rules England while her son Richard crusades. Generally rides all over Europe on horseback to retrieve wayward offspring. Most influential woman of the 12th century.

“Let the word of the Lord not be bound up in your mouth, nor human fear destroy the spirit of liberty in you. It is more acceptable to fall into the hands of men than to abandon the law of God.”

Read: A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver E.L. Konigsburg

4) Queen Elizabeth I 1533-1603

Outlives her enemies to become queen. Establishes the Church of England. Sends Sir Francis Drake to the new world. Fends off the Spanish Armada. Claims to have the heart and stomach of a king. While imprisoned early in life uses her diamond to write poetry on the window.

“Life is for living and working at. If you find anything or anybody a bore, the fault is in yourself.”
“Fear not, we are of the nature of the lion, and cannot descend to the destruction of mice and such small beasts.”

Read: Elizabeth I: Collected Works

5) Mary Sidney Herbert 1561-1621

Sister of Sir Philip Sidney and related by marriage to George Herbert. Has the queen over for dinner. Raises two sons. Finishes Philip’s translations of the Psalms after his death and completes her own translations of Petrarch. Manages the Pembroke estates. Watches Shakespeare with King James. John Bunyan models the “House Beautiful” on her home.

“Unlock my lips, shut up with sinful shame,
Then shall my mouth, O Lord, thy honour sing;
For bleeding fuel for thy altars flame,
To gain thy grace what boots it me to bring?
Burnt offerings are to thee no pleasant thing;
The sacrifice that God will holde respected
Is the heart-broken soul, the spirit dejected.”

Read: The Collected Works of Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke.

6) Anne Bradstreet 1612-1672

Leaves England for America with her husband at the age of eighteen. Suffers from joint problems and later tuberculosis. Moves all over the New World. Raises eight children. Becomes America’s first published poet and the first woman published anywhere.

“If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.”
“There is no object that we see, no action that we do, no good that we enjoy, no evil that we feel of fear, but we may make some spiritual advantage of all.”

Read: The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, Several Poems Compiled with Great Variety of Wit and Learning

7) Susanna Wesley 1669-1742

The twenty-fifth of twenty-five children and gives birth to nineteen herself. Has a sometimes absent and incarcerated husband. Raises and educates her ten surviving children, most notably John and Charles Wesley. Survives two severe house fires. Writes meditations and scriptural commentaries. Begins her own Sunday afternoon services in the absence of proper teaching from the church.

“Whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, takes off your relish for spiritual things…that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may seem in itself.”

Read: Susanna Wesley, Her Collected Writings

8) Abigail Adams 1744-1818

Wife of the second U.S. president, mother of the sixth. Gives birth to six children. Restores the family home into what is now a National Park. Tells her husband to ‘remember the ladies.’ Has to chop the wood herself while living in the White House.

“If we do not lay out ourselves in the service of mankind whom should we serve?”
“Great necessities call out great virtues.”
“If we mean to have heroes, statesmen and philosophers, we should have learned women.”

Read: The Letters of John and Abigail Adams

9) Julia Ward Howe 1819-1910

Marries Samuel Gridley Howe at the age of twenty-four. Raises her six children while studying foreign languages and writing essays, poetry, and plays on the side. Writes the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Publishes multiple works without her husband’s knowledge. Works to establish Mother’s Day. Travels around Europe and the Caribbean.

“I am confirmed in my division of human energies. Ambitious people climb, but faithful people build.”
“I want to take the word Christianity back to Christ himself, back to that mighty heart whose pulse seems to throb through the world to-day, that endless fountain of charity out of which I believe has come all true progress and all civilization that deserves the name. As a woman I do not wish to dwell upon any trait of exclusiveness in the letter which belongs to a time when such exclusiveness perhaps could not be helped, and which may have been put in where it was not expressed. I go back to that great Spirit which contemplated a sacrifice for the whole of humanity. That sacrifice is not one of exclusion, but of an infinite and endless and joyous inclusion. And I thank God for it.”

Read: Words for the Hour, Modern Society, Sex and Education

10) Fanny Crosby 1820-1915

Blind from infancy. First woman to speak in the U.S. Senate. Joins the Faculty at her alma mater, the New York Institution for the Blind. Marries Alexander Van Alstyne and gives birth to a baby girl who does not survive. Writes almost 9000 hymns using almost 200 pseudonyms. Works devotedly in city rescue missions.

“Thou the Spring of all my comfort,
More than life to me,
Whom have I on earth beside Thee?
Whom in Heav’n but Thee?”
“Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!
O what a foretaste of glory divine!
Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.
This is my story, this is my song,
praising my Savior all the day long;”

Read: Fanny Crosby’s Life Story, The Blind Girl

11) Christina Rossetti 1830-1894

Youngest of four children, all of whom are very creative. Deals with bouts of depression. Becomes deeply interested in the church. Begins to publish her poetry and eventually hailed as the natural successor to E.B. Browning. Suffers from Graves Disease and breast cancer. Volunteers in a fallen women’s home. Never marries.

“Choose love not in the shallows but in the deep.”
“Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
Of labour you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.”

Read: Goblin Market and Other Poems

12) Laura Ingalls Wilder 1867-1957

Moves with her family from Wisconsin to Kansas to Minnesota to Iowa to Dakota Territory by the time she is ten. Survives one of the most bitter Dakota winters on record. Begins teaching school at the age of fifteen. Marries Almanzo Wilder and has one daughter, Rose. Eventually settles in Missouri. With encouragement from Rose, writes about her growing up years.

“Laura felt a warmth inside her. It was very small, but it was strong. It was steady, like a tiny light in the dark, and it burned very low but no winds could make it flicker because it would not give up.”
“Then he drew a long breath, and he ate pie. When he began to eat pie, he wished he had eaten nothing else.”

Read: the Little House series

13) Corrie ten Boom 1892-1983

First licensed female watchmaker in the Netherlands. Joins the Dutch resistance. Has a secret room built in her bedroom to hide Jews from the Gestapo. Is arrested and placed in various Nazi prisons and camps for ten months. Is released through a clerical error. After the war founds a rehabilitation center in a former work camp.

“And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness anymore than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives along with the command, the love itself.”
“Mama’s love had always been the kind that acted itself out with soup pot and sewing basket. But now that these things were taken away, the love seemed as whole as before. She sat in her chair at the window and loved us. She loved the people she saw in the street– and beyond: her love took in the city, the land of Holland, the world. And so I learned that love is larger than the walls which shut it in.”
“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover the prisoner was you.”

Read: The Hiding Place (Read, re-read, and re-read this)

14) Dorothy Sayers 1893-1957

Wins a scholarship to Oxford and is one of the first women to receive a degree there. Writes detective novels about Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane. Gives birth to an illegitimate son and oversees his upbringing from afar. Also writes plays, literary criticism, and, somewhat reluctantly, apologetics. Translates Dante’s entire Divine Comedy. Known for wearing men’s clothing because it is more convenient and generally speaking her mind.

“God did not abolish the fact of evil; He transformed it. He did not stop the Crucifixion; He rose from the dead.”
“And what do all the great words come to in the end, but that? I love you- I am at rest with you- I have come home.”

Read: Whose Body?, Gaudy Night, Are Women Human?, Christ of the Creeds, “Why Work?”

15) Flannery O’Connor 1925-1964

Raised and remains a devoted Roman Catholic. Participates in the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop. While working on her first novel is diagnosed with lupus and moves home to her mother’s house in Georgia where she lives for the rest of her life. Writes many stories and two novels which most readers either misunderstand and hate or misunderstand and love. Obsessively raises poultry, particularly peafowl.

“‘Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead,’ The Misfit continued, ‘and He shouldn’t have done it. He thrown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it’s nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow Him, and if He didn’t, then it’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness,’ he said and his voice had become almost a snarl.”

“All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.”

Read: Wise Blood, The Complete Stories, Mystery and Manners, The Habit of Being

16) Elisabeth Elliot 1926-

Moves to Ecuador. Marries Jim Elliot. After her husband is killed by the Auca, moves with her small daughter to live with them and share the gospel for two years. Moves back to the U.S. Marries twice more. Has her own daily radio program for thirteen years. Writes extensively on her experiences and on Christian living.

“One does not surrender a life in an instant. That which is lifelong can only be surrendered in a lifetime.”
“It is God to whom and with whom we travel, and while He is the end of our journey, He is also at every stopping place.”
“We want to avoid suffering, death, sin, ashes. But we live in a world crushed and broken and torn, a world God Himself visited to redeem. We receive his poured-out life, and being allowed the high privilege of suffering with Him, may then pour ourselves out for others.”

Read: Through the Gates of Splendor, These Strange Ashes, Let Me Be a Woman

This is not an exhaustive list, and tends to show my own biases, but I figured it was best to start with what I knew: most of these women are westerners and tend toward the more modern. Many of them are published authors and almost all are prolific letter writers. This list is not meant as a compendium of those you absolutely must love and admire. It’s just encouragement and ideas towards starting a list of your own.
And if you want some male heroes, I’m happy to oblige. I just figured that an inventory like that was, well, a little easier to find…

Scattered Summer

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I’ve spent the last few days making lists and sorting through things and organizing and wondering how my life came to have so much paper in it and how all of it became so precious to me. My bed is scattered with books and pages and I’m doing my best to line them up and string them together. I am late in returning to this blog, so in the way of an entry, I’ll give you a list of favorite things from my scattered summer, (with a little help from my sister, an even more devoted list-maker than myself.)
1. Watching the NBA finals with my Grandma and Sally and hearing their varying disdain for LeBron (S: “He really just thinks he’s all that.” Gma: “Now, Alice, I know it’s wrong to pray for harm on somebody, but I think you can just wish a little sometimes…”)
2. Being joined by a strange, frightening, but apparently friendly gang of dogs on my walks
3. Cherry limeade from Sonic
4. Laura Ingalls Wilder
5. Being led on a biking tour around South Lake Tahoe by my 81-year-old granddad
6. Ocean’s Eleven
7. Trivial Pursuit
8. Rotting foliage in the Sierras that smells like sharp, strong cinnamon
9. Flannery O’Conner
10. The cabin at Tahoe and finding my grammy’s handwriting on old spice bottles
11. The heroic efforts of the Kings Canyon Lodge’s snack bar’s sole responsible employee
12. Listening to U2 in the Sierra Nevada
13. Mist on the trail at Yosemite
14. Vineyards in the Napa Valley
15. Learning good advice about wardrobes from the Pevensies
16. Hairpin turns in the hills
17. Dim sum in San Francisco
18. Hugging my Laura in Ohio
19. Lining up bridemaids’ dresses
20. Being given nail polish and attempting to use it
21. Taking a selfie with the bride
22. A (slightly late) fourth of July parade in Jackie’s grandparent’s yard, led by said grandparents, with great fervor
23. Going out for an evening walk in Grove City and watching the volunteer fire department practice their cat-rescuing technique, as the neighbors gathered to see
24. This conversation at my friend Emily’s house, during a game of Go Fish, in which our cards were laboriously spread out in front of us:
Tamagn (age 4): Miss Alice, do you have any….H’s?
Alice (age 22): No, I sure don’t.
Bereket (age 5): You mean aces.
T: Aces.
A: No, none of those either. Go fish.
B: Okay. Now it’s Peter’s turn.
Peter (stuffed squirrel, age indeterminate): Daddy?
B: Yes, Peter?
P: Do you have any fives?
(B turns his cards over one by one and diligently examines them.)
A: …doesn’t look like you do…
B: Okay. Go fish.
25. Coming home. Houses are different in summer, you know. They seem to innately understand that they’ve become a little superfluous—that everyone has lots of plans to get out of them and leave them behind on vacation. To throw open the windows and doors and let the outside in. My childhood home in particular seems to breathe and sigh and doze and sweat and dream in the summer. The smooth wood floors get sticky from the humidity, and the ceiling fans hum sturdily and sleepily.
Then, earlier this evening, I went downstairs and made myself a quesadilla for dinner. Or, at least, I began with tortillas and cheese, but then I added some butter and marjoram and, for unknown reasons, it all puffed up like a fancy pastry and tasted very, very good. And now I want to write, so there’s that.

Culture and the Gospel

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I want to write about something I know I’ve already addressed in different ways in this entry from last Christmas and especially this one, from a couple years ago, but I’ve had a lot of time to myself to think recently, so what follows is going to be particularly long. Beware.

For most of us it is so easy to see the sharp disparities between Christianity and the culture in which we live. The situation in Iraq is suddenly turning awful and we’re all looking on in horror. And in our own backyard, we see so much bitterness and rebellion and mockery. There is greed and cruelty and an all-consuming cult of self, often espoused by people who claim to care a very great deal about “making the world better.”

We have learned enough about our Lord, who overturned tables in the temple, to understand that this is not what he wishes. We are able to see how what is around us is rotten. But I think the sight of so much that is dreadful often tempts us, as a church, to a subtle wringing of the hands, and to a sometimes not-so-subtle and rather despairing call to “reinforce the battlements of Christian morality once more,” to “save our God’s dying and unheeded biblical principles in the face of a perverse and evil world.” “Oh!” we say, “The culture has gone down the drain, and we must defend truth.”

First of all, God’s principles are not dying. They are quite as well and strong as He is, was, and always will be. (Whether anyone is listening to them is an entirely separate matter.) And the culture has not “gone down the drain.” I’m sorry if you are only just now noticing and it comes as a shock, but it has always been down the drain, ever since Adam and Eve ate the fruit. If you want to understand what is wrong with the world, the root of its rottenness, bitterness, and cruelty, we must always look at our own hearts.

Cultures of all kinds and ages, after all, are changing, ephemeral, and really rather insignificant in the scheme of things. I have been watching Ken Burns’ Civil War series in preparation for my debut as a history teacher in the fall, and I keep thinking of what Dr. Edwards used to say: that the great sin of our country in the nineteenth century was slavery, and that now it is abortion. I believe there is quite a lot of truth to that, both specifically and generally. Most cultures are born with their own virtues (usually rather scant) and their own sins (usually quite profuse,) and are eventually, and often violently, overtaken by the next human concoction for governance, approximately opposite in its schemes of morality, but just as self-sick.

The problem is humanity. We are the common denominator. I have been rereading Mere Christianity (if you couldn’t tell already) and Lewis is quite clear about the ultimate unimportance to the Creator of these revolving human civilizations and their timely deaths. “God has no history. He is too completely and utterly real to have one.” The marvelous mystery is that, though cultures will eventually fade away like bad dreams, mankind can be real, as our Father is. In fact, in the great spiritual war, we, the men and women made in His image, are the battlefield, the ground to be gained, of much more significance than “kingdoms and principalities.”

Yes, Christ came to save, but He did not come to save our crumbling, sello-taped culture. That will pass away. He came to save you and He came to save me—he came on a quest for our sinful, maggot-ridden hearts: to take them, and if we will let Him, to remake them out of entirely fresh stuff, to remake them out of Himself. He came to teach us, by example, to how to die and then how to live anew.

But I know that the question remains. How do we live anew in a world filled with machinations which are so clearly built for the purpose of degrading what is holy? I remember the Ten Booms, living out the gospel in Nazi-occupied Holland. (I have picked an extreme example on purpose, because perspective is a healthy thing, and also because you ought to read The Hiding Place.) I remember that they prayed, and took pity upon their oppressors. They prayed, and opened their doors to every man, woman, and child who needed them. They prayed, and even in prison sent messages to one another pronouncing the goodness of God. They prayed, and, at long last, transformed concentration camps into places of healing and new life. This, I believe, is what it means to live faithfully.

We are to be the people in whose homes and minds “mercy and truth are met together.” We are told to seek the kingdom, to take heart, to trust the Lord, to love our enemies, to fear no more, to forgive as we have been forgiven, to be patient and joyful, to store up sound wisdom, to pray without ceasing, the bless those who curse us, to forsake foolishness, to walk humbly, to be kind and tenderhearted, to freely give, to serve the Lord all the days of our lives, “and, having done all, to stand.” We are told to speak, to do, to go, to give, to pray, to love, to die, but never, to my knowledge, does God tell us to be concerned citizens. He wants quite a lot more than that. He does not want His people to make the world fit for Him, but to make His people fit for their true home.

I‘m still struggling to express what I mean, (probably because I’m still learning all this myself,) so I’ll borrow an old puritan prayer from the Valley of Vision:

Thou Great I Am,

Fill my mind with elevation and grandeur at the thought of a Being with whom one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day, a  mighty God, who, amidst the lapse of worlds, and the revolutions of empires, feels no variableness, but is glorious in immortality.           

May I rejoice that while men die, the Lord lives; that, while all creatures are broken reeds, empty cisterns, fading flowers, withering grass, He is the Rock of Ages, the Fountain of living waters.

Turn my heart from vanity, from dissatisfactions, from uncertainties of the present state, to an eternal interest in Christ.

Let me remember that life is short and unforeseen, and is only an opportunity for usefulness;

Give me a holy avarice to redeem the time, to awake at every call to charity and piety, so that I may feed the hungry, clothe the naked, instruct the ignorant, reclaim the vicious, forgive the offender, diffuse the gospel, show neighbourly love to all.

Let me live a life of self-distrust, dependence on Thyself, mortification, crucifixion, prayer.

Of course, I have been holding back. I have been holding back the greatest, grandest thing: “In the world you will have tribulation: but be of good cheer,” Christ says, “I have overcome the world.” Everything I have been saying is just talk, really, for He has already done it. It is in the Divine character to act as savior and conqueror. It is in our Lord’s character to be more powerful and holy and loving than we can even conceive. Even when we are so often faithless, He promises to remain faithful. I’ve been reading Psalm 46 a lot lately:

God is our refuge and strength,

A very present help in trouble.

Therefore we will not fear,

Even though the earth be removed,

And though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;

Though its waters roar and be troubled,

Though the mountains shake with its swelling.

There is a river whose streams shall make glad the city of God,

The holy place of the tabernacle of the Most High.

God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved;

God shall help her, just at the break of dawn.

The nations raged, the kingdoms were moved;

He uttered His voice, the earth melted.

The Lord of hosts is with us;

The God of Jacob is our refuge.

Come, behold the works of the Lord,

Who has made desolations in the earth.

He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;

He breaks the bow and cuts the spear in two;

He burns the chariot in the fire.

Be still and know that I am God;

I will be exalted among the nations,

I will be exalted in the earth!

The Lord of hosts is with us;

The God of Jacob is our refuge.

And He always says what He means and does what He says. When he hung on the cross, he said, “It is finished.” And so it must be. As Julian of Norwich repeats so definitely, because it is the surest truth she knows: “All manner of things shall be well.”

I have been playing hymns on my cello lately, and my grandpa will come in and sit down and close his eyes. By the second or third note he is always singing along. The other day I found myself watching him and wondering what it took to be the sort of person who, at nearly ninety, loves his God so well. And then I realized. My grandfather is the best man I know, but his devotion to his Lord has nothing to do with his virtue. He loves so deeply because the gospel is so rich and so true. Everything and everyone he meets compels him to hold onto Jesus so much tighter.

And I have been listening to my grandpa’s prayers better recently too. He has trouble with many words now, but there is one word he always speaks clearly: blessed. He never asks God for blessing, but seems always to be thanking Him for it. “You have blessed us,” he says, “We are so greatly blessed.” He knows the abundance of mercy that is promised, and that what our Lord promises he will accomplish. “Behold, I make all things new.” My grandfather comprehends the gospel so much more fully than I do, but still, he is only standing at the edge of God’s goodness, and even there he is overwhelmed.

“Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.”

Do not listen to any nonsense about culture wars. The battle is spiritual, it is for the hearts of the children of God, and victory is already certain. We’re going home.

Cricket Neighbors and a Spread of Books

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I’m at my grandparents’ in Missouri for a couple weeks, and there’s a cricket in my room. At first he was in the corner by the chair, chirping cheerily and loudly all night long. He kept me awake, but when I searched for him, I couldn’t find him, and the internet informed me that he would probably live for weeks on end. I was a little lonely after my sister left so I resigned myself and thought, “Oh, well, I guess it’s nice to have a friend.” One night he seemed to be in the closet and one night in the shower (though I was grateful to find it empty when I got in a few minutes later.) Eventually I thought there might be two of them, calling back and forth to one another about secret cricket things. I would lay awake listening, and wondering what they were saying, and generally wishing that if I was to have roommates we could maybe all be on the same sleep schedule at least one night a week.

Then on Saturday evening I was sitting in my chair reading, when my elusive friend emerged from under my bed. He was larger, uglier, and altogether looked much more like a cockroach than I thought he would. He stopped in the middle of the carpet and stared, so he may well have been thinking the same thing about me (though I know I don’t look like a cockroach.) In any case, I immediately realized that I had been deluding myself to think of him as a friend and that we would in fact always be mortal enemies while he insisted on keeping me awake at night. I lunged for him with a shoe and he retaliated by taking one great leap back under my bed.  So I turned out the light and took a less impressive leap onto the bed and under my covers. He continues just as awful every night, and I’m seriously considering moving down to the end room just to escape, even if it means having to wash an extra set of sheets.

I’ve been doing other, more valuable things than running away from crickets, though. Last night after Sally had had her fill of the game between “the Spurs and the Heats,” I watched the first bit of Ken Burns’ documentary on the Civil War to help me out with teaching next year. At first I nearly cried because it was so good, and then I settled down and took notes.

I’ve also been reading. Or, rather, spreading books all over my bed, face down, and switching between them at a hectic pace.

The Wingfeather Saga (by Andrew Peterson, yes, the one whose music you love): As I said so many times this year, I’m not normally into fantasy, but these were lovely, the footnotes in the first book particularly. If you like very large puppies, people who can fly, and noble twelve-year-olds, you will like this. (I would guess it also has a niche market with people who hate cows and forks.) The fourth and last installment comes out later this summer and I’m pretty excited.

Between, Georgia (by Joshilyn Jackson, worth it for her first name alone): I found this in the massive Ed McKay’s in Chattanooga. I enjoyed it. It was worth the time I spent reading it. Now go find your own summer novels at McKay’s.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (by Milan Kundera, that Czech man): I’m part way through this. I like the bits about the one character’s crass mother, but every time he goes back to talking about all these love affairs that all these neurotic people are having with each other and obsessing over, I get bored. Probably won’t finish it.

Radical Femininity (by Carolyn McCulley, whom I know nothing else about): I’m not a huge fan of the title. (As my dad says “I only like the word radical in math. It actually means something there.”) But I like the history in it very much and wish there was more of it. Also only halfway through, so the verdict is still out.

Home (by Marilynne Robinson, she of Gilead fame): I’m enjoying this. I like Glory. I like her father. I like John Ames. I like their little town. But here’s the thing: they’re all preoccupied with and fascinated by Jack Boughton and his sudden reappearance, and I’m not. I’d like to move along and hear about Glory’s divorce and other things that are not Jack. But then again, I’m halfway though. We’ll see what happens.

Mere Christianity (by C.S. Lewis, of course): I don’t think I’ve read this since high school and I’m very pleased to be coming back to it again. It’s my grandparents’ copy, but I’ve been sneakily marking the bottoms of pages for bits I want to copy down. Hooray for truth.

After I’ve finished wading through all of these to my satisfaction, I plan on rereading all the Little House books for the first time in a very long time, and then moving onto Robinson’s Housekeeping (not about Jack Boughton! Hurrah!) and the “spiritual biography” of Flannery O’Conner that Mary got for me. Please write me a letter and tell me what you’re reading, in great detail. I will add it to my list and perhaps get to it in five or ten years.

Without Particular Purpose

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I am in Chattanooga right now, on my sister’s couch in my PJ’s, sleepily eating a buttered bagel. Hello.

Tomorrow we drive up to Nashville and on Friday we ride up to the fabled and much-loved Brookfield, MO with my aunt and uncle. I’ll spend a few weeks with my grandparents and then I’ll fly out to San Francisco because we’re having a family vacation at Lake Tahoe (and other places.) Then I come back to Cleveland for a wedding. Then to western PA to see a few friends, and, in mid-July, home at last. (It’s okay. You don’t have to remember all that.)

Aside from all those plans, I don’t have much to write about, but I very much want to write anyway. Which is, perhaps, dangerous. I keep a folder of all these entries and beneath them are notes for posts that never made it. There is one called “Courage, Compassion, and Documentary Films,” which contains only a long and odd list for documentaries I wanted to see and no courage or compassion whatsoever. There’s one called “Helvetica,” which is blank (I guess because I don’t have Helvetica?) There’s one called “Independence Day” (in which I seemed to want to write about Monica Lewinsky? No, thanks,) and one called “Thursday’s Children on Game Night.” There’s even an old one called “Unrequited Love,” which, though it has some positively heart-wrenching lines and everything, I think we can all agree is best kept off the world wide web.

I am, however, determined to for this little entry to make it. I suppose I am simply at loose ends. Because I am done with school and not yet begun teaching, there is not much for me to be doing except keeping myself clean and pleasant and helping out where I’m needed. I don’t even know enough yet about what I’ll be teaching in the fall to start reading up. I am without particular purpose. 

After a very full year of “doing the next thing” there are suddenly not many next things to do. This, I suppose, means that (once  I become a little less preoccupied with sleep,) I’ll fill my time with learning again to read, learning again to take barefoot walks by myself, learning again to write letters and long emails, to pray as I go. My heart is steadying itself to this slower pace. I’ll let you know what it finds.

Things I’ve Learned in College

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Do not listen to anybody who tries to tell you which are the best years of your life. Just go ahead and live.

People have layers. And they’re really funny and often wonderful. Be patient and you’ll see.

Take people up on their hospitality.

Sometimes there are good reasons to change your mind about other people and about yourself. This phenomena is more commonly known as admitting you were wrong.

Eat chocolate with your Earl Grey.

Spend a long time over meals, especially with friends.

Do not automatically believe what people say about you just because they know you well, or even because they love you well. Listen to them, but remember that they might be wrong. The only ultimate authority for your identity is Christ.

Smile at people on the sidewalk.

You are not owed forgiveness. It is a gift.

Tell good stories.

Don’t overcook your broccoli.

Make friends in class.

Listen with your mouth shut.

Do not compare or quantify pain. That’s the coward’s way. Find a hand to hold, look it in the eye, and walk through it. It may be long, but keep going.

Don’t be afraid to go ahead and grow up. Grown-ups can be happy too.

Try not to ask for extensions on papers.

Say hard things in person, but speak slowly when you do.

Sometimes everything will feel distant and unreal. Do not live by that feeling, but instead remember that home is not here and that there are other pilgrims alongside you on the way.

Write thank you notes.

When somebody wants to be your friend, take them up on it.

Make soup. You can freeze it forever.

When a friend confides in you, treasure that, especially when it is something hard.

Sometimes you will still be shy. And, so long as you are not rude, that’s just fine.

You will fail. You will not be the person you know you ought to be. And that’s okay, not because everybody fails, but because there is One who didn’t.

Be kind. THIS IS SOMETHING YOU CAN DO. NO MATTER WHO YOU ARE OR WHERE YOU ARE. YOU CAN DO THIS AND IT WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

And most importantly, perhaps, the things I’ve been taught by others:

“Do the next thing.”

“Say what you mean.”

“Determine to love people.”

“Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.”

“Grace is sufficient even though we huff and puff with all our might to try to find something or someone it cannot cover. Grace is enough. He is enough. Jesus is enough.”

Suspension

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Until recently I was so ready to go. I kept saying “I’m so ready.” “Graduation is so soon.” But now it’s hit. Yesterday in 20th century (last Friday of classes, last day of dressing-up-just-because) Messer mentioned in his typical Messer fashion how for the last few days we were just going to quietly spend some time with Gilead, the last novel on our list. He also said it was to be a gift for the graduating seniors. For most of us that two o’clock hour this Wednesday will be our very last class.

So like I said, it’s hit, it’s come. It feels as if someone has run a thread through my little heart and is holding it gently over some little canyon. When my heart becomes too heavy, I think the thread might break. I suppose my best bet is to figure how to live with a heart suspended in the breeze like that, a heart that feels every little motion, every change in the weather. I will not mind when the thread breaks, but I’ll keep my eyes wide open till it does.

Tonight Laura and I’ll go to Greek Sing, and I’ll sit and watch and I’ll love it as wholeheartedly and inexplicably as I always I have. I’ll write my last little paper on writing as vocation. I’ll give my honors presentation and go to Dr. Brown’s house for dinner and make food for our last Quad party. I’ll pay attention to the way familiar feet descend stairs, to which stones are missing on the bridge and to where the rain puddles on either end of it. I’ll pay attention to the deep, deep green of the grass here that I’ve never gotten over and never will, to the way we crouch to check our little mailboxes, and to the way the sun (when it comes) draws us all outside, hungry, as if light is the stickiest, sweetest thing. I’ll pay attention to the silence in the chapel at midday, to the ready laughter of a room of full of English majors, and to the slow way we all move in line, waiting for communion come Sunday night.

I’ll hug people and I’ll write things down, and then the thread will break with the weight of it all and I’ll go home.