Tag Archives: reflections

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.

Time

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Time has become my ultimate enemy. Not the great hooded figure whom Shakespeare fears, standing and cradling his massive scythe, but instead his nasty, pockmarked little cousin who crouches on the floor and counts out the hours like currency. He carries a scythe too: it’s small and sharp and with it he kills sleep and he kills joy.

Okay. Well then. Now that that ponderous metaphor is out of my system, we can move along.

Really, though, I am staging a rebellion against minutes and deadlines and ticking second hands. Or trying to, at least. This semester has been too much for me in some ways. I was secretly triumphant last week when my alarm clock gave up the ghost and I blissfully slept an extra hour and a half.

I’ve just had a nice long car ride full of no obligations (i.e. a little computer that will no longer hold a charge) and friendly company, so in the spirit of my revolution against the pressure of the hours, I’d like to propose the following amendments to my own manifesto.

-Don’t antagonize sleep. When you go to bed in the wee hours and are still not able to rest, don’t pull out your computer again to do a little more. Be patient. Wait.

-When the number and scale of responsibilities frighten you, pray over your hours.

-Eat meals at the table. Try not to bring your work with you.

-Remember it’s only little old you and your little old worries. And God is very great.

-Take long baths.

-Place diligence over deadlines. Think of whatever your mother would say.

-Remember that you love to write and read and talk. Don’t let yourself twist God’s blessings into burdens.

-Wage war on the passive voice with courage. Go forth and do. Do the next thing.

The notes above are obviously intended for time immemorial, but it’s also worth pointing out that this is Holy Week. The hours of this week have great import for life and death and death-in-life and life-in-death. So I will pause, and worship, and remember Him who is eternal, who created time and came down to enter it Himself, who knows that it too may be redeemed.

 

Meaning What I Say

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I feel as if this blog has turned into a rather haphazard space over the past few months and for that I apologize. If you want to know what I’ve been busy doing, particularly for the past couple weeks, my main occupation has been going around and telling people how tired I am. I have quite a nice little speech about it now: I begin by talking about emotional exhaustion and end with a few glistening little tears. Very affecting, I’m sure. And it is true. I do always strive to mean what I say. If I tell someone that I am tired, or I say that I am alright in that staunch, plaintive way, I will feel tired and alright for the rest of that day and possibly most of the next, because I have said that it is so.

But I am other things besides tired. Tired is not the only thing. So I will tell you the rest of those things now. I will say them, and help myself along the road to meaning them.

I am amused. I am amused by this semester’s eclectic “Things Done” list. I am amused by Dr. Brown’s excitement that she knows someone who has seen T.S. Eliot. I am amused by the inexplicable ways some people indent their emails. I am amused that last night at two o’clock I found myself sitting on our table complacently eating sweet potato and rutabaga because I could not sleep.

I am hopeful. I am hopeful for my little novel. I am hopeful for the midterm essays I have due tomorrow and that perhaps I will do laundry soon. I am hopeful for my friends, for their courage and their patience. I am hopeful for coming spring.

I am awed. I am awed to write and to breathe and to sometimes sing. I am awed not only to have found a friend in Ernest Hemingway and Flannery O’Conner, but in Ralph Ellison and even occasionally William Faulkner. I am awed that sometime recently I seem to have stumbled into a venerability which allows me to call myself a woman, and not merely a girl.

And I am certain. I am certain that my God is good. I am certain that I am His. I am certain that He means all this: the long cold spells, the singing birds in the still-bare trees, the rising sun in the clouded sky. I am certain that my God always and eternally means what He says.

Seeing To It

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Last night I went to the grocery store for milk and bread and things, left the milk behind at the cash register, and did not even miss it till about eleven this morning. I worked on revising my novel for nearly four hours, then walked up to campus this afternoon to see friends and thought about how glad I will be not only for the snow to melt but for the spring rains to come along and wash all the salt and grime away and give the earth’s face a good washing.

A couple weeks ago I was reading Matthew for my New Testament class and I came across Judas.

Then Judas, His betrayer, seeing that He had been condemned, was remorseful and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.”

‘And they said, “What is that to us? You see to it!” Then he threw down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed, and went and hanged himself.

The chief priests buy a field with the money and name it after blood, then Matthew moves the narrative back to Christ facing Pilate. Pilate washes his hands, because he cannot handle the crisis in front of him. So Jesus carries the cross and “sees to it.” Jesus and Judas both die.

So when I read that passage above, I wanted Judas to turn around before he ran to the temple with his tainted silver. I wanted him to look once more at the condemned Man, I wanted the betrayer to look at the One he had betrayed, and perhaps see the way innocent blood might save a sinner. Instead he spattered his corrupt blood over his sins to try to pay, because paying was all he knew, and left behind the legacy of a field fit only for strangers’ bones. The chief priests gathered up the price of their own long-awaited Messiah’s life off the floor of a temple that was meant for Him.

Judas tried to “see to” his guilt himself, because he saw only himself. He looked at his Lord’s impending death upon the cross and saw only his own sinful actions. He did not see Christ sweating blood in the garden because He already knew what lay ahead. He did not see Christ cry to his Father, “Why have You forsaken Me?” or announce what He had finished. Judas looked only at himself, and did not understand the way Jesus meant His death, meant the spilling of His blood, meant the saving of His people.

On Sunday, Judas had begun to rot and Jesus had risen and told His friends to rejoice. He told them not to be afraid, that He was with them always. Judas thought that his traitorous kiss meant a grim and dismal end, but my God, the God whose “unoffending feet” I have determined to look to instead of my own, carried the mark of that betrayal through crushing death into new life and victory. He shall see to it that Fields of Blood and stony hearts are made new.

One Hundred

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This is my hundredth entry.

I remember when I first started college and my mom told me I should start a blog. I knew about mommy blogs and food blogs and fashion blogs and celebrity blogs and look-I’m-adventurous-and-studying-abroad blogs. But I was only going to college, and most people I know do that. Sure, I liked to write, but I did not think I would have anything very out-of-the-way to say. I told her ‘No.’

Then one day that first fall semester, I was bored, and I made a wordpress account. A few days later I nervously posted this. And it stuck. The feeling of writing and having others read it stuck to my ribs.

Within months it became indispensable to me. I got used to the feeling of an idea growing in the back of my mind, of catching the little bugger and slapping it down on paper, poking and prodding and stretching its edges till it was just as I wanted.

I have written about my small travels, about sitting home, about my friends, about my classes, about my writings and my readings, and a great deal about my family. I have learned to write about my God in a way of which I never used to be capable. I am beginning to know him. This blog has caught much of the excess that often overflows my edges.

I often like to pretend that writing here is more than that, though. I like to pretend that writing an entry about a fear or a frustration will simply quench it. That just bringing it out of the darkness and showing it to the internet will kill it swiftly and thoroughly, and I can march forward in triumph without ever looking back. But it never does work like that. It usually takes much more prayer and patience than 600 words can carry until my fears are driven out into the swine.

But while writing will not heal me, it has taught me that I am not alone. My ugly ingrown fears and sins are wonderfully unoriginal and shared by many of the people who surround me. I know because they have told me so. Many of you have told me so, have reminded me that I am one saved wretch among many others.

I may very well have been right freshman year in thinking that I don’t have anything very out-of-the-way to say, but I’ve had the joy of saying it anyway, of being listened to, of crying and laughing at myself, of coming back again and again to pour myself out in convoluted words. I am tremendously grateful. Hooray, little one hundred.

A Pilgrimage in Cold

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I’m writing while travelling, which is a good place for it because you have time to write, and, ostensibly, there are things to write about. (We shall see.)

For the last two weeks of my break I taught a little extracurricular class at a classical school in Durham on performing Shakespeare. I had four girls and on Saturday night they’ll be doing Ophelia’s mad scene at the school’s Arts Festival, and I will be just offstage with my massive Shakespeare book, ready to prompt and grinning when the one playing Laertes bursts out with “to HELL allegiance!” Getting myself home has been a hassle, but being there will be worth it.

Also, of course, the air down south will not be so debilitatingly bitter. It was so cold in Grove City this afternoon that I saw one of the maintenance guys out waiting for a ride in his thick, dark work khaki, deigning to do an undignified little cold-dance.

I have learned things about winter since coming to school up here, things they neglect to tell you in books. I have learned the way snow creaks beneath your feet like old, shifting floorboards, I have learned the way the black top takes on a ghastly spotted grey, and how hands turn an angry, dry pink. I’ve come to love the pain of a good, itching ear-thaw.

I am a deep, soulful lover of spring and so winter here has been a lesson in waiting, but not in waiting only. Crocus-time is quite a ways off, and though I’m already dreaming of it, in the meantime I have a chance to love pilgrimage. A pilgrimage which will continue to lead through that which is uninviting and icy and painfully sharp, through that which I must learn to love,.

So I have the opportunity in wintertime not just to find warmth, but to continue to diligently notice when the sun comes out. When I walk up to campus and back I try not to count my steps, not to hunch my shoulders so harshly against the wind. I try to watch the white out the window when I can, the patches and stretches of it, and remember that spring would be nothing without a long, frozen sleep. That winter is the world’s rest. When the snow melts the grass will be a wonderful green I still fail to comprehend.

But now winter has come in its good time. I shan’t hurry.

How to Write a Novel (Part I)

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-Be frightened underclassman.

-Decide to write novel so that will be person worth speaking to at parties and also to change world and self.

-Excitedly produce short prologue out of thin air.

-Realize have, as usual, given main characters awful names.

-Keep names out of cussedness.

-Hope am good enough writer to become famous anyway.

-Settle in gleefully for months of planning.

-Begin with one outline-ish word document.

-Assign pretentious title from Hopkins.

-Spend summer filling awkward orange notebook with disconnected paragraphs, most written by Tolkien, not self.

-Use special pen.

-Never mention to anyone.

-Make lists of books for character (not self) to read.

-Allow word document to spawn eighteen runty chapter babies.

-Eat M&M’s.

-Eventually mention to one friend, then two, then three.

-Refer to as “my story.”

-Become overwhelmed when friends speak confidently of future B&N author cardboard cutouts.

-Feel weird.

-Search internet for pictures which look like characters.

-Discover no one looks like characters.

-Wonder if characters are too ugly or too pretty or just too fictional.

-Encouraged by crazies of NaNoWriMo, write twenty actual pages in one year.

-Hide away in princess lounge to do so, usually wearing pajama pants and fuzzy blanket as cape.

-Pretend am doing something respectable and normal like biology.

-Feel covert and important.

-Watch Mad Men to inspire self.

-Realize have given self five seventeen year old boys to write about.

-Question own decision making skills.

-Tell more people.

-Continue to shyly use word “story.”

-Have brilliant idea to do independent study!

-Realize will have to begin saying word “novel” for clarity.

-Use “novel” in conversation, usually whispering and doing awkward side-eye to gage reaction.

-Promise to put new friends in as characters “just crossing the street or something.”

-Regret decision.

-Write syllabus for following semester, brazenly assigning self one hundred whole pages.

-Become horrified by others’ unconditional confidence in abilities.

-Decide everyone is possibly mentally deficient (including self, for trying.)

-While home for summer, read Thomas Wolfe for inspiration.

-Hate Thomas Wolfe.

-Continue to read Thomas Wolfe.

-Write another actual chapter.

-Regret hundred-page decision.

-Consider sending pathetic email to independent study professor.

-Give chapters to mother.

-Wait.

-Re-read Mennyms books and weep.

-Receive chapters back from mother, covered in red and “don’t be discouraged.”

-Take twelve deep breaths.

-Revise some.

-In first independent study meeting, when professor cheerfully asks about current progress, begin crying.

-Realize am safe from professor ever asking same question again.

-Continue to be terrified.

-Discover deadlines excellent for forcing courage.

-Create whole bookmarks folder of encouragement websites for writing.

-Become surprised by usefulness of internet.

-Put one word after another.

-Become suspicious when professor unequivocally likes new chapters.

-Wonder nervously if professor actually knows about novels.

-Begin to adjust to own use of word “novel.”

-Struggle, however, to adjust to friends’ use of word “book.”

-Become surprised by continual question, “What’s it about, or can I know?”

-Wonder if world, including own English professor’s wife, believe am hording magical personal secrets.

-Become embarrassed by own inability to summarize plot.

-Wish plot was full of magical personal secrets.

-Tell sassy close friend entire plot in detail.

-Allow friend to give character fatal illness.

-Refuse to allow friend to change first name of main protagonist.

-Become less afraid.

-Turn in self-assigned pages approximately 30 hours late on regular basis.

-Decide sleep is good reward for writing.

-Discover if keep self up writing too long, head will refuse to stop writing, even in bed.

-Decide writing will have to be its own reward.

-Send uncomfortable chapter to friend to avoid asking questions of delightfully awkward professor.

-Become pleased with own cleverness.

-Begin writing acknowledgements page.

-Go, go, go.

-Insert unplanned chapter in act of great daring.

-Decide to use as senior honor’s project so will never have to let go of baby.

-Become sloppy.

-Consolidate chapters into document called “A Draft for Word Count and Ego.”

-Long for revision.

-Dream about revision.

-Wish could time travel to next semester when am revising.

-Become alarmed by professor’s comments about narrative point of view.

-Wonder if POV is even important.

-Wonder what POV even is.

-Become reckless.

-Send apologetic late night emails to professor for incoherence of narrative.

-Drink Earl Grey.

-Cry nonsensically loud tears of joy.

-Nearly finish draft before bed.

-Wake up in elation.

-Actually finish draft!

-Post well-planned facebook status.

-Perform deeply private happy dance.

-Raise ire of entire TLC by printing 144 pages immediately before classtime.

-Use massive stapler.

-Carry around printed draft like newborn child.

-Become terrified by others’ eagerness to hold it.

-Email draft to family. (Change “Ego” to “Encouragement.”)

-Sit in bath planning eradication and merging of certain minor characters.

-Refuse to type or write single word in interest of “letting story breathe.”

-Read portions of draft aloud to self while roommate is away.

-Stab maliciously at embarrassing portions with finger.

-Send impossibly patient independent study professor messy thank you note.

-Consider studying for finals.

-Consider beginning new project.

-Continue instead to mentally smother current project with affection and abuse.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

Why This Matters

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Yesterday I had my last CivArts and Dr. Munson talked about modernism and postmodernism, all crushed into one little class period. I love modernism, and I am not entirely sure why. I think it is because of the earnestness of self-critique and the push for excellence and the wholehearted love of a worthwhile thing. Nowadays we are rarely interested and earnest and willing, or, if we are, we try not to admit to it too much. No one would want to be our friend.

Of course what happens to modernism is that it is determined to find art only in introspective progress and is sometimes rather obsessed with obscurity. It digs and digs in the darkest recesses looking for new beauties, usually while hiding its eyes from revealed truth. It crouches and shrivels away from the light, until it collapses into a little dung-heap of postmodernism and self-referential irony.

To watch this happen over the course of an hour and half has made me so sad. It’s the terrible history of a people governed by fear.

I know fear. I am afraid. Throughout college I have become a much slower writer because of fear. I am afraid that I will say the wrong thing, that I will not say it well enough, and most of all, I am afraid that the things I write have no real meaning, that my words are just cheap, hollow ornaments which will shatter when dropped, to then be swept up, thrown away, and forgotten.

So, in my small grey puddle of fear, I sympathize with the modernists in their avant-garde tunnel vision. If it’s new, there’s a better chance of something worthwhile being accidentally dredged up in there somewhere, right? At my worst, I must even acknowledge a kinship with the deconstructionists. Some mornings, before I get up, I lie there, deeply afraid that there is nothing worth saying at all.

But I keep writing. I wrote papers this semester, kept up with my blog, edited two magazines, and drafted a novel. Why do I do that? Why do I spend hours of my life crouched on my desk chair, staring at a blinking cursor, hugging my knees, accidentally holding my breath while waiting for a word?

I do it because fear is mortal. I do it because fear pronounces my efforts dead and futile, but John Donne told me that death shall die. I do it because there are bloody hands stretched upon a cross, mighty and willing to save Prufrock from drowning. I do it because death has burst out of the grave and invited me to put my hand in his open side. I do it because a very long time ago, men followed a star in the eastern sky, where the sun rises, and found God incarnate. I do it because the Child who lies in the manger in Bethlehem is eternally stronger than the marked monstrosity which slouches towards it.

“For unto us a Child is born, / Unto us a Son is given.”