Tag Archives: college

Friends

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Last night I watched It’s a Wonderful Life in Harker Lounge with quite a few people whom I like very much. At the end George gets a copy of Tom Sawyer from Clarence with this inscription in it: “Dear George, Remember, no man is a failure who has friends. Thanks for the wings. Love, Clarence.” Well, I’ve been feeling real rich and successful lately.

I am so grateful for the people who surround me, who listen to me and who I get to listen to. I am grateful for friends who let me mark up what they write. I am grateful for friends who laugh at me, whether I am funny or not. I am grateful for friends who let me share their worries, and who don’t mind that sometimes I have nothing to mend their hurts but my own creased brow. I am grateful for friends who send short emails and leave long voicemails. I am grateful for friends who are generous and enthusiastic on days when I am neither. I am grateful for friends who sass me, who point and giggle when I am silly. I am grateful for friends who love my family and my past simply because they are mine. I am grateful for friends who remember what I told them long ago. I am grateful for friends who hold my hands while they talk to me. I am grateful for friends with whom to be silent.

I am grateful for these people who have, for whatever reason, found me worth their time. They remind me every day that my God is good. He is good to me.

Content

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It’s Christmastime again. I know, it’s not December, but trust me, I’m not ready for this, and I need to start readying now. Friday night my family sang Christmas carols around the piano. (George boomed them out then slumped in his chair and pretended he hadn’t.) Saturday my dad and I drove back up to school and snowflakes flurried at the windshield, and I pretended that I didn’t like it, but I did. (Don’t tell.) On Sunday I made plans with friends to watch It’s a Wonderful Life and probably Shop Around the Corner too. Yesterday, I read a couple favorite T.S. Eliot poems about Christmas, “The Journey of the Magi” and “The Cultivation of Christmas Trees.” They are about death in life and life in death and the awe-filled Coming.

I am tired. Tired and full, and tired and waiting. I am full from this semester. I am full from running with Abby and writing poetry and early mornings and Sassy Tuesdays in Physics with Jackie (and Libby) and cleaning house and long showers and lunches with Laura and lunches with Heidi and weepy Friday afternoons and visits to the ABT hall and a carnation from my brother and rides to church with Haley and reading  good poetry and the Lizzie Bennet Diaries and playing in the pit for the musical and Monday-Wednesday-Friday lunches with the girls and dropping things in intercampus mail and pie in Fantasy on Tuesdays and writing a story with chapters and hugging people on the sidewalk and watching my five-year-old friend Josiah draw a picture for me and write “ALAS” at the top.

I am waiting for finals and Christmas, for travel and rest, for this to be over and what’s next to begin. I’m waiting for birth and for death, and T.S. Eliot speaks true—I’ll find both with the Child in the manger.

I am content.

Mercy

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Just now I came across some very unexpected free time and I said to myself (aloud, mind you,) “What if I wrote a blog entry right now?” So I’m doing that incredibly dangerous thing: beginning to write with no end of either kind in mind.

These couple weeks have been very busy. I’m playing in the pit for the musical, which has devoured my evenings, I’m beginning tutoring on Thursday, and lots of medium-sized assignments have begun to crop up out of nowhere. Also I’ve been having a fair number of meal dates. (Alice is popular—Hooray!)

All of these things have done a fair job of keeping my mind off of something I’ve been avoiding thinking about: mercy. You see, I always thought the principal thing about mercy was to give it. But I’m slowly beginning to realize that I’m not usually on that side of the transaction. I sin against God and sin against others, but since I’m no paragon of virtue, I find that people very rarely sin against me. So in my dealings with mercy it is usually being offered to me by kind, wounded hands.

I’ll tell you: I don’t like taking it. It’s not that I mind admitting I was wrong, but often, I cannot bear to be set right. I don’t like taking “the bleeding charity.” I would rather wallow in my sin and say, “No, but I belong here—you will not raise me up.”

That realization has been nagging at me for a few days now, asking me to deal with it, and today in Fantasy we talked about Return of the King. I re-read one of my favorite passages, the passage that first made me cry. But this time, to my great discomfort, I read it differently.

“Wormtongue!” called Frodo. “You need not follow him. I know of no evil you have done to me. You can have rest and food here for a while, until you are stronger and can go your own ways.”

Wormtongue halted and looked back at him, half prepared to stay. Saruman turned. “No evil?” he cackled. “Oh no! Even when he sneaks out at night it is only to look at the stars. But did I hear someone ask where poor Lotho is hiding? You know, don’t you, Worm? Will you tell them?”

Wormtongue cowered down and whimpered: “No, no!”

“Then I will,” said Saruman. “Worm killed your Chief, poor little fellow, your nice little Boss. Didn’t you, Worm? Stabbed him in his sleep, I believe. Buried him, I hope; though Worm has been very hungry lately. No, Worm is not really nice. You had better leave him to me.”

A look of wild hatred came into Wormtongue’s red eyes. “You told me to; you made me do it,” he hissed.

Saruman laughed. “You do what Sharkey says, always, don’t you, Worm? Well, now he says: follow!” He kicked Wormtongue in the face as he grovelled, and turned and made off. But at that something snapped: suddenly Wormtongue rose up, drawing a hidden knife, and then with a snarl like a dog he sprang on Saruman’s back, jerked his head back, cut his throat, and with a yell ran off down the lane. Before Frodo could recover or speak a word, three hobbit-bows twanged and Wormtongue fell dead.

Do you see me? Do you see me in the character I’ve always pitied, and, therefore, from whom I’ve felt comfortably separate? Do you see me in the refusal of the outstretched hand, the whimpering return to agony and rottenness? Do you see that it does not end well?

I don’t understand. I don’t understand why I would rather label myself with my sin than with God’s grace. I don’t understand why I do not want what is good. I don’t understand why I would rather be endlessly chastised than forgiven. I don’t understand why I’d rather look at my feet than at His glory.

I behave as if Christ on the cross meant nothing, as if “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” did not absolve me also, as if no one’s ever told me He loves me.

I feel a bit like the one hundredth sheep, who has caught herself deep in the briars. Come find me, Lord. I’m crying mercy, or beginning to, at the very least.

Distance

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This weekend I went home for fall break. Almost five hundred miles, but really only eight hours. Eight hours is close. Distance makes most sense to me in terms of time. They are cousins, you see.

My grandparents’ house in Missouri, for example, is two days away, and that’s as close as Wednesday, but then again, with a plane, it’s as close as tonight.

A mile is short when I drive it and long when I run it and perfect when I walk it, but an hour is always the same. So I prefer the hour.

Distance is usually time to me, but time is often not distance. I mean that nothing, no part of life, seems far to me right now. I feel as if I stand dead center.

When I was one my daddy built a swing on the big tree in our backyard.

When I was two my mama earned her doctorate.

When I was three my friend Danny would let me have his pudding cup at snack time.

When I was four my mom would put my hair up in little fountains on top of my head.

When I was five I prayed for a little brother every night.

When I was six I got one.

When I was seven I showed off to my friends by pouring chocolate milk on my pizza at lunchtime.

When I was eight Mary and I flew to California alone and the stewardess let me pass out peanuts to all the passengers in my cabin.

When I was nine Karen and I made peanut butter fudge by candle light on a snow day.

When I was ten I learned to knit.

When I was eleven I was in such a foul mood when we got to the Grand Canyon that my mother had to order me out of the car.

When I was twelve I was a flower girl for the first and last time.

When I was thirteen I stopped hating boys.

When I was fourteen Noah and I made up my imaginary big brother, Richard.

When I was fifteen I thought I was in love.

When I was sixteen I clocked a friend in the nose one night on a golf course, but she forgave me.

When I was seventeen my grammy died and the tree with the swing fell and I cried myself to sleep.

When I was eighteen I wrote a poem.

When I was nineteen my grandma called to ask how I did the green beans that one time.

And now I am twenty, and none of these things seem distant. Forty, when I will be greying, does not seem too far, and neither does eighty-three, when I plan on being quite white.

Before dinner just now I went and sat in the prayer room and read over the journal there, whose entries date back to before I ever came here. But those people, those friends, those interceding brothers and sisters seem very close indeed. I am intended to feel that way, I think, because they are close—their ink, my hands, our cries to the same living God.

One thing seems far, though. There is a wooden cross in the prayer room. People have laid their burdens upon it. They have written their fears and sins and trespasses on notecards and nailed them to the tree, with a small hammer that lies on the floor. Purple sharpie on the stipes praises Christ for freedom, for distance from sin.

“As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.”(Psalm 103:12)

From east to west—why, whenever you get to one the other is still just as far away as it was to begin with. It can’t be done. They’re hours, days, eternities apart, a miraculously impossible distance.

As I Write This

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I can hear a group of freshman boys serenading their sister hall down in the courtyard with “We Are Young.” I wonder what they expect to come of it…

I am waiting for an email from a professor giving me permission to take a quiz early on Wednesday, so that I can catch a ride home to North Carolina for the long weekend.

I am wearing my mother’s flowered dress, which has pockets.

I am wishing that today’s weather would hang around forever, so I could walk in it forever. This afternoon, Amy and I met a woman walking her goats on Pinchalong.

Our room is cluttered, but the carpet is vacuumed.

I am thinking about how I like pumpkin mini-muffins and friends and my church and poetry.

I am planning for tomorrow–I’m going to bake bread at Emily’s.

I should clean off my desk. It has notebooks and spoons and a mug and pencils and a calculator and a sweater and a hairbrush and post-its and needle and thread from a button I had to sew back on and an empty envelope that says “$Cash$” and a stuffed giraffe named Butterscotch and a letter I need to answer. And other things.

I have my knees curled up to my chin.

I’m remembering that I should go to bed early because I have Bible study at seven-thirty tomorrow morning at Beans on Broad.

The boys in the courtyard did two encores.

Again and Again

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I’ve had things to write about. I just haven’t got round to it, see. So all these nice ideas were piling up in my head, threatening to form this big, old entry about things I like and things that are great and things I’m thankful for, and I thought, “Man! That’s so unoriginal. That’s been DONE.” And it has. Again and again. By me. Here and here and here and here and also here. (For example.) In fact, that’s most of this blog.

But funnily enough, in all that listing and enumerating I have yet to exhaust God’s blessings. Think of that. And I’m commanded to praise the Lord. Again and again and again. Isn’t it lovely when what you’re commanded to do and what you want to do is precisely the same thing?

So here we go, friend.

One thing:

Last week I went to a little meeting with the staff of The Quad and we had this discussion about why we read and what it means to be a good reader. And normally, that would have been just fabulous, but this time instead of participating properly, I quietly had myself a little existential crisis.

Why did I read? I knew all the right answers, about how it makes you more fully human and more fully alive and all that, but why did I, Alice, who had written multiple papers on this very topic, actually read? What were my real motivations? Was I only mimicking my parents? Did I really even like it? Was my whole life a façade?!?

So I sat in the corner and stewed and drank apple cider and did not contribute to the discussion. But then later, you know, I figured that if my life was a lie and all that, I probably would have had an inkling of it before age twenty. I’m fairly introspective (read: self-absorbed.) Also maybe, just maybe, I’m a normal person who reads for the normal reasons. Sometimes to escape, sometimes out of habit, sometimes because I have to, and sometimes that I may “know life and know it more abundantly.” So now I’m re-assured. And that’s a good thing.

Another thing:

We’ve had game night at the Edwards’ a couple times so far this semester. And it’s a little thing, but for me it’s also a big thing, (and after all this time I still don’t even really like games.) Sometime I’ll write another separate entry to tell you why, but no hurry. It’s going to be a part of my life for the next while here.

A third thing:

I have a smallish job this semester and it’s a gem. Every other week on Friday or Saturday morning I borrow my dear roommate’s car and drive to Mercer while everything is still dewy and chilly, with myself and the quiet and that one field of sunflowers by the side of the highway. And then I clean Dr. Brown’s house. This morning I did windows. Soap and rinse, time to dry and Windex. (Time to dry is my favorite part.) I’m tired at the end. I’m tired at the end because I did something. In the quiet morning, I did something.

And then I drive home, put on decent clothes, eat lunch, and go to class to read books. It feels marvelously like a double life. And I like both parts.

The next thing:

There’s something else that deserves a whole entry, which I’m hereby scheduling for late February. It’s the American Shakespeare Center at Blackfriars in Staunton, VA, or, as I like to call it, the happiest place on earth. I’m going over our break in February with Dr. Harvey and other delightful people for a one credit travel course to see four plays. There’re still spots open, so you should come too. Even if you think you don’t like Shakespeare, even if you think you don’t like anything, you will like this.

A particularly delightful thing:

One of my favorite things about this semester so far has been the friendships. Every day, I wake up shocked to discover how great it is to have friends. (God only knows why I’m surprised to find that this is blessing.) I’ve always had friends (really, I have—even in seventh grade when I specifically planned not to because I was only going to be at that school for a year and who really needs ‘em?) But this year, we’re upperclassmen, spread across campus, (or even states and countries) busy with non-intersecting things, and I seem to have entered into the wild, wonderful, and weirdly adult world of intentional friendship. The kind where you send notes and emails and say you and me tomorrow, kid.

It keeps surprising me what friendships grow and last, when I didn’t think they could. It even surprises me what friendships happen at all, and how once you get past the first layer of person there’s more of them underneath and more and more and more. C.S. Lewis wrote that “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.” It’s true, friend. And it’s kind of astounding.

The greatest thing:

Well, I suppose the best part is the again and again, the knowing of life more abundantly. Miss Jan, a dear friend from long ago used to sit at the fascinating piano in her living room that had keys and magical buttons, and sing the final verse of “Amazing Grace” this way:

“When we’ve been there ten MILLION years, bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise than when we first begun!” (Again and again and on and on)

Thunder

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The first night of my freshman year, I was lying in bed in the throes of homesickness when I heard the train whistle. “There’s a train two blocks from me at home.” I thought. “They have trains here, too!” And I went to sleep.

I came into this year sick to my stomach with fear, much more irregular fear than two years ago. And over the past week we’ve had thunderstorms. We never have thunder here. Thunder makes me think of home and summer evenings and my front porch and dinner soon and we-should-walk-in-the-gutter-like-when-we-were-kids. Thunder, like a train whistle, means comfort. And I’ve rejoiced in that.

Comfort is not bad. My corner is not bad. But Christianity is not intended to be cozy. When Christ said “Follow Me,” he did not preface it with “Come along, children, tea and scones at the next inn!” He said “Take up your cross and follow Me.”

We hear this and we fear and we hide. We don’t want to touch our cross, don’t want to think about what our cross may be, and don’t even try to make us carry it. It’s a dreadfully common fear. T.S. Eliot even put it into the mouth of the chorus, in their last speech in Murder in the Cathedral.

Forgive us, O Lord, we acknowledge ourselves as type of the common man,

Of the men and women who shut the door and sit by the fire;

Who fear the blessing of God, the loneliness of the night of God, the surrender required, the deprivation inflicted;

Who fear the injustice of men less than the justice of God;

Who fear the hand at the window, the fire in the thatch, the fist in the tavern, the push into the canal,

Less than we fear the love of God.

We acknowledge our sin, our trespass, our weakness, our fault:

(…) Lord, have mercy upon us.

Christ, have mercy upon us.

Lord, have mercy upon us.

I cower by the fire behind the shut door, but that is not as I ought. Tonight at church, Ethan quoted St. Basil. “If you live alone whose feet will you wash?” Whose indeed? I am not called to serve myself, to obey my own frightened, sin-riddled demands.

So even if the crosses we bear and hang upon are the crosses of ourselves, as Whittaker Chambers would say, even if what hinders us is our self-made, self-inflicted, self-devouring fear, we are still to follow. His is the only heel that can crush that fear, though it may “hurt like billy-oh.”

We preface the Lord ’s Prayer with “Now as our Savior Christ has taught us, we are bold to say:” If I can call Him who made me my “Father, who art in heaven.”  I can be bold to say and do so much else. I can stomp out the fire with a marshwiggle foot, open the shut door, and step out. The thunder is not only a comfort. It is a reminder, a call.

I Have a Corner

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I live on the top bunk this year and that means I have a corner. Two walls and a close ceiling.

On them, I have puttied picture of family, notes from people who love me, dear postcards, and a list of scriptural principles that my grandma typed up for me when I graduated high school. (Quite an ordeal, typing.) I have two teddy bears up here, a stuffed giraffe, pillows, a quilt, a blanket. My bible and day journal live here, but my computer is never invited. I’ll type this entry later.

I have always been a hider, I think, particularly in the past year or so, but I know more each day that “my giant follows me wherever I go.” So this corner is not so much for hiding as for being held. I do not have a literal cleft in the Rock of Ages, but I have a corner. I am exposed—fair game for the devil, but something safe and strong is round about me.

I have only had this corner as I know it since Sunday, but already I have come up multiple times for comfort. I don’t mostly look at the things on the walls—really I mostly look out the window down into the inner quad. I’m still “a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” It’s just that the sea is more peaceful from this particular view. And when I climb down again, it usually stays that way.

Here’s what I mean to say: I want to share my corner. I want to share it with everyone from my roommate, to the lady who cleans our bathroom, to the stranger who doesn’t know me from Adam. (Eve?) Do strangers ever read this blog? I hope so. Just come all the way up the stairs from the cafeteria to 390 West. (The door sticks, but push it open.) Top bunk. It doesn’t matter if I’m here. You can climb up, and cry or pray or laugh or sleep or read or write or just sit. I’ll crawl up and bring you tea if you’d like, or I’ll leave you alone if you think I’m weird. (However, I’m fairly proficient at hugs, if you’re into that sort of thing.) Also, my roommate’s name is Sarah. She’s friendly. So come.

In our first creative writing class of the semester, Dr. Potter read us the parable of the talents and talked about how all God requires of his servants is to do what we can with what He has given us. Well, He’s given me a corner.

Things

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It’s raining while I’m writing. And I’m thinking about things. Things I’m packing, things that are following me to Pennsylvania on Friday. Jewelry and clothes and books and paper clips and notes from friends and shampoo and paper and too many shoe boxes and bobby pins and boots and notebooks and two teddy bears of varying sizes and a couple very tiny ceramic pigs.

I’m working on a story right now, and the other day I had the distinct pleasure of listing the contents of a character’s room. The list was longer and less sensible than the one above. I really like it. I like imagining all those things piled together with no seeming order.

Though I don’t know many people rich (or silly) enough to have one, I have never liked the idea of a room that looks like this.

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It looks like the place Darth Vader would go to relax. Even the plants are dead. Give my little Victorian heart clutter any day.

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Beautiful, beautiful unmatching clutter.

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Touchable, holdable, lovable things.  Things that sit on your desk and wall, and say, “Remember?”(which leads to another “Remember?”…and another and another.)

Remember intercampus mail?

Remember the time Reb made you stop dressing your boy bear in girl clothes?

Remember when you wrapped food up in a napkin to look like a purse and sneak it out of the gala, but then you had to stop in the photo booth first?

Remember when Karen first fell in love with giraffes?

Remember that second day of seventh grade when you were so scared to go back that you threw up, but then you found a brand-new, sunshine yellow beanie baby in your backpack?

Remember your cousins when they were little and grinny?

Remember when George used to sign all correspondence “From a loving brother”?

Remember kindergarten when you were all set to marry Spencer Hill and be a rescue nurse in forsaken places like Nevada?

Remember when you got to fill a new (to you) room and year with these things, and smile at them? Oh, wait. No you don’t. That happens on Saturday. Excellent.

Rich Condition

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A week and a half ago, during the drive back up to school I made this list of things I was thankful for.

Friends who periodically lose their voices

Birthday cake

The opportunity to read books and write papers

My sister’s slackline

My sister

Weddings

The south

Leaves on trees

Mille Bornes

My grandparents

Driving by myself

The promise of summer jobs

The perhaps of eventual teaching jobs

Storybooks

Heroes

Computer battery life

Sun

Pretty dresses

Mothers who sew things magically overnight like the tailor of Gloucester’s mice friends

Not wearing make-up

Growing up

Chairs that recline

Not going to the dentist

Mountains

Game night

The fact that there is a man named Roger Beverage running for Sherriff Somewhere in West Virginia

Small boys In Subway with bowl cuts

Scenic overlooks

The Family Pantry

Dinner

Double spring

The interim between then and now has contained some less than pleasant days, but let me tell you some nice things.

-Sarah and I are officially living on third floor West next year, with a bathroom all to ourselves. I will forever remember MEP with fondness, but can promise not to miss it in the slightest.

-I registered for classes last night, and (along with Pre-Calc and Baby Physics) am taking Creative Writing, Sacrament and Lit, and Fantasy Lit next semester. Wonderful, wonderful.

-Today I got up and dressed up for Friday for the first time in quite a while. Then, with the rest of my Educational Policy class, I went to Dr. Edwards’ lecture for the Vision and Values conference, instead of watching the movie he’d assigned us for our class hour. He sent us an email later which said “You all are very kind. Disobedient. But kind.”

-This afternoon Laura and I went on a walk down Pinchalong, and sat on the edge of a cornfield for about twenty minutes. The field was raised so right at eyelevel we could see the stubble of the stalks all crowded round with big bright dandelions, and behind them were barely-leafy trees and a grand blue sky. There was sun and wind and roosters from that one weird house crowing in the distance. We decided that it was almost like finding Nowhere.

-In a few minutes I have a date with Heidi and Maddie to discuss making a big old wonderful breakfast for the Family Pantry in a couple weeks. Then I’m going to children’s theatre, then to finally watch that movie with the girls from Ed Policy.

I can easily describe this year in one word: humbling. I can no longer seem be able to do anything the way I’d like, or be anything I think I ought to be able to be. I am incapable, broken. Sometimes I feel like those words must be written on my forehead. I know that this is God “breaking the back of foolish pride,” and it is good, but it has been long. Every time I think I must surely, surely have learned enough, something else I had been counting on breaks down, and I must run for cover to the Rock. I must keep returning to Him till I clearly see that all else really is sinking sand. The first verse of one of my favorite hymns ends in this way:

Perish every fond ambition,
All I’ve sought or hoped or known;
Yet how rich is my condition!
God and heaven are still my own.

That, I suppose, is the lesson of the year. My condition is rich. I have faithful friends whose goodness continues to bless me, I have truly wonderful parents who will love me no matter what, I have two wonderful homes (at the very least), I have clothes and books and papers and pencils which make me quite happy, and I’m getting a really good liberal arts education, for heaven’s sake! Yet I have all these things by the grace of God. They are His. And, by the grace of God, so am I.