In My Own Little Corner

I’m unofficially, temporarily back in the office for the first time since March 2020. The rest of the university (including students, yay!) returned last month. My department is under construction, so we’re working remotely until the project is completed. Construction is expected to last the duration of the fall semester, and was projected to begin August 1. It is now September 16; it still hasn’t started. I’m taking advantage of being in the office while my officemate is on paternity leave. I’m enjoying being in a space intended for work, quiet and with effective air conditioning that I don’t pay for. 

It’s been interesting this week relying on muscle memory for old habits I had to pause last year. I forgot how to pack a lunch the night before, how to bring a sweater no matter the time of year because it’s always cold indoors. How to walk across campus to a meeting. 

As I crossed the lawn onto campus Monday morning, I was struck with the realization that I’m working for an actual place, not just an idea. 

Returning to work means returning to commuting by train. Taking the train again is, as always, a mixed bag. Today, a man was smoking a cigarette on the train, and I stepped on a pile of broken glass in my flats (I’m OK!). Train stations continue to smell like urine, whether or not you can see the puddles. Commuting by train is, for me, a mostly ugly experience. Public transit is an emotionally and physically complicated place to be, strewn everywhere with examples of human suffering and thriving and garbage of every description. 

Walking down the steps to the train station is like reading a series of clues. What was the situation that caused someone to take off first their left shoe, then their sweater, then three different face masks, then a pair of pants, and then their right shoe, all while running down the stairs? 

Yesterday morning, I dropped my lunchbag on my kitchen floor and the glass container inside shattered. I did not cry. Morning resiliency isn’t a strength of mine, so I chose to stay home. Even after only two days in the office, working from home was jarring. The apartment next door is being painted, and it is the loudest, most antagonistic noise you could imagine. I sat on the couch, typing and watching men on skinny, wooden ladders spackle and sand high in the air. I was not very productive. I stayed in my pajamas for too long and watched too many episodes of Nine Perfect Strangers, which is too engrossing to just have on in the background. 

Today, I’m back in the office, enjoying the morning calm and the vase of red and white dianthus basking in the glow of my desk lamp. 

Feeling thankful (and a little grossed out). Time to do the writing I get paid for.

Rose of the World

I had better write something. I'm trying to engage more fully in life during this season of the Nativity. Mostly, I'm remembering why I sometimes like to live on the periphery of my own consciousness: it's easier. The thing about fasting, about any kind of willing self-privation, is that it leaves you feeling empty. That is how I felt all day today. I wandered through my day, wander is the only appropriate word, feeling hollow inside. I kept asking myself why I felt that at the very center of myself all that existed was emptiness. This is why I fast--I fast so that I can come more quickly to the end of myself. If I am not distracted by food or media, by things that bludgeon my spiritual awareness with their facade of pleasantness, then I cannot escape a great awareness of my own lack. It's not a good feeling, but it's a true one.

There is this George MacDonald fairy story I like, "The Wise Woman", in which two horrid little girls--Agnes and the princess Rosamond--are kidnapped by a mysterious woman and thrown, separately, into a room of mirrors. In the room they are naked, left entirely to their own selves. It takes very little time to discover how ugly the world is if you are the only thing in it.

Nothing bad could happen to her--she was so important! And, indeed, it was but this: she had cared only for Somebody, and now she was going to have only Somebody. Her own choice was going to be carried a good deal farther for her than she would have knowingly carried it for herself. . . .All at once, on the third day, she was aware that a naked child was seated beside her. But there was something about the child that made her shudder. . . .The moment she hated her, it flashed upon her with a sickening disgust that the child was not another, but her Self, her Somebody, and that she was now shut up with her forever and ever--no more for one moment to be alone. 

Well, that is how I am beginning to feel. That's how I feel during every fast. When I strip away the things that distract me from a sober knowledge of my own self, I feel trapped in a world of mirrors. And at the center of the world is only my own Somebody. This is unpleasant. I wonder what it feels like to be in solitary confinement, are there any distractions then? Is there any way to turn away from a vision of your true self?

I think, eventually, after looking so deeply into the well of my own soul, I'll see something glimmering at the bottom. This something is grace, I think. It is the evidence of God working in my soul. The presence of the Holy Spirit, given to me as an inheritance, shining constantly through the murky, stagnant waters. In the meantime, I will try to see myself without flinching.

"My soul shall make her boast in the LORD: the humble shall hear thereof, and be glad."

The Nativity Fast

 

Today is the first day of the Nativity fast. Christmas is actually coming! I have a really bad attitude about the fast just now because I don't want to give up any creature comforts. I've been feeling so tired and drained lately, and the things I have given up for the fast are the things I most typically use to comfort myself. But last year, I found that participating in the fast and using an advent wreath kept me grounded and unstressed in the midst of all that holiday frenzy. If there is anything I need, it is the space to be focused and calm. 

I need to compile a good reading list for the next 40 days. I'm hoping I'll write more regularly during this time as well. Here is a happy thought for the next forty days: "This is a joyous fast in anticipation of the Nativity of Christ." Jesus is coming!

I found the following tips and the aforementioned quotation on the website for the Self-Ruled Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America (http://www.antiochian.org/node/18518): 

The Purpose of Fasting
The purpose of fasting is to focus on the things that are above, the Kingdom of God. It is a means of putting on virtue in reality, here and now. Through it we are freed from dependence on worldly things. We fast faithfully and in secret, not judging others, and not holding ourselves up as an example.

• Fasting in itself is not a means of pleasing God. Fasting is not a punishment for our sins. Nor is fasting a means of suffering and pain to be undertaken as some kind of atonement. Christ already redeemed us on His Cross. Salvation is a gift from God that is not bought by our hunger or thirst.
• We fast to be delivered from carnal passions so that God’s gift of Salvation may bear fruit in us.
• We fast and turn our eyes toward God in His Holy Church. Fasting and prayer go together.
• Fasting is not irrelevant. Fasting is not obsolete, and it is not something for someone else. Fasting is from God, for us, right here and right now.
• Most of all, we should not devour each other. We ask God to “set a watch and keep the door of our lips.”

Do Not Fast

• between December 25 and January 5 (even on Wednesdays and Fridays);

• if you are pregnant or nursing a newborn;

• during serious illness;

• without prayer;

• without alms-giving;

• according to your own will without guidance from your spiritual father. 

  
  
  Oh, here is one more quotation that sums up my thoughts on the subject:
  
  

  In light of the gross materialism of the secular Advent - the Christmas shopping season - the season of Advent has a valuable place in our spiritual lives. Through this season's emphasis on prayer, fasting and charity, the spiritual reality of Christ's Incarnation is brought to bear on our daily lives, thereby preparing us to welcome the Messiah into our hearts at time of His Advent.  -Fr. Lawrence Barriger (http://www.acrod.org/readingroom/spirituallife/on-the-nativity-fast)

   It's time to say, "see you later," to Ordinary Time.  
   
  Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things, and give me life in your ways. 
  
  

On Acedia and Beginning Again

"You don't have acedia, because you still care. If you care enough to read a book about acedia, you don't have acedia." --A friend

I'm reading the book Acedia and Me, by Kathleen Norris. I've been meaning to read more of Norris' writing ever since I read Cloister Walk in college. Norris is a protestant writer who fell in love with Catholic liturgy and became a Benedictine Oblate. I love her because she reminds me that I am not alone in the world. When I am feeling too lazy to write, or am having trouble explaining why something moves me, reading spiritual memoir is incredibly helpful. It's necessary. The spiritual writings of women like Norris, women like Anne Lamott or Lauren Winner, give voice to my internal spiritual and emotional tensions, serving as spiritual direction when I have lost my way.

In her book, Norris defines acedia as a lack of care: a spiritual and psychological malaise that combines the worst bits of sloth and depression. I began reading this book several months ago, but put it down because the heavy tone of the book and its correspondence to my own life was too much for me to carry. Also, I was visiting Chicago at the end of winter; the season itself had succumbed to acedia. But I have taken the book up again this fall, because the topic still spoke to me. I am nearly done with it now, in the final chapter, and I am so glad to have walked with Norris thus far. She knows the things I ought to know. She knows that constant meditation on the Psalms is deep, good, sweet food for the soul. And she is incredibly gracious with herself. I mean, unbelievably. And that same graciousness has unexpectedly encouraged my Christian walk more than anything else has in a long, long time.

I have a tendency to see God as an irritated, disapproving, wrathful taskmaster, as a person waiting for me to make mistakes so he can fall out of love with me. But when I speak of these anxieties with others, with people who have walked with God more closely than I, I always get the same response: "You don't have to try so hard."

Norris quotes Evagrius, and many others who have written and lived in the monastic tradition. Have I ever mentioned that the very word monasticism draws me in with an irrepressible force? It does. Somehow, on some level, I am a monastic. It's my nature. Anyway, there is one section where she quotes an elder monk speaking to a brother on the nature of life. He says, "Brother, the monastic life is this: I rise up, and I fall down, I rise up, and I fall down, I rise up, and I fall down." 

This is an incredibly helpful statement, and it relates to Calvin's doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. Sometimes I struggle with understanding how I can lose so much ground in an area of my life that I had previously excelled in. I used to be so good at monasticism! I used to carry around a book of common prayer, and illustrate miniature manuscripts of the Psalms to hang on my walls to meditate on throughout the day. I used to shun television because I wanted only holy thoughts to be stuck in my head, and it worked, and it was well with my soul. But I have almost forgotten how to live this way, and I only sort of care.

But, Norris reminds me, the Christian life is all rising and falling. But the life of the faithful one, the one to whom Christ offers a white robe, the one who endures, is the one who continues to rise and fall. The faithful life is one which is full of new beginnings. The faithful person is one who does not give way to acedia after falling yet again into an old vice. The faithful person continually begins again. This is how I want to think of my life, and this is what I mean when I say that Norris is unbelievably, incredibly gracious. She can accept her own humanity. Isn't that beautiful?

In other news, Norris also brought to my consciousness the idea that I am not immortal. I mean, I am going to live in heaven forever with God, but first, I will die. This is actually a very refreshing thought, because it is easy for me to become discouraged in what Norris calls the "endless cycle of now," that I envision as my future. The thought that time is not an unlimited resource is difficult for me to believe, but accepting this truth is essential if I want to live free of acedia. If time is limited, then it is precious. And if time is precious, then it actually does matter how I spend it. I am re-resolving to live faithfully. Therefore I will feed on the Psalms, I will write daily, and I will always begin again.

The "cure" for acedia, as I see it, apart from therapeutic and spiritual intervention, is faithfulness. Faithfulness is just another term for beginning again. The faithful person joyfully seeks the monochromatic repetition of each day, knowing that it is in these hopelessly boring rituals that faithfulness is wrought in the soul. So I'll leave you, dear reader, with this prayer, which Norris quoted in her book:

This is another d.ay, O Lord. I know not what it will bring forth, but make me ready, Lord, for whatever it may be. If I am to stand up, help me to stand bravely. If I am to sit still, help me to sit quietly. If I am to lie low, help me to do it patiently. And if I am to do nothing, let me do it gallantly. Make these words more than words, and give me the Spirit of Jesus. Amen.

Holy Nativity: Bright Paint and Sweet Anger

God in three persons, Holy Trinity.

Well, it's Christmas Eve, and as usual, I've failed to keep this blog abreast of the progress of my Nativity Fast. I'm feeling really glad that Lent is coming up in a few months. I think, maybe, I'm getting used to the rhythm of fasting and feasting. I failed several times during this fast, and abandoned my reading plan half way through. But still, being in the general mindset of fasting was invaluable during this frenzied, noisy holiday season. I'm shockingly calm. Calm and prepared are the two words that best describe my mood this year.  I think this is due entirely to my experience of God in this fast. One day I will be good at fasting, I tell you! One day. In the meantime, I am going to learn to fight legalism and slovenly habits as I align my life to the Christian calendar.  

I'm learning things about myself this fall. Mostly, I've been learning a lot about what I picture when I use the word "home", and how far my actual home falls short of this image. I think, sometimes, I feel guilty about wanting to be comfortable. I have the personal tastes of Marie Antoinette, but I try to live like John the Baptist. This is maybe irrelevant to this post, but for me to feel at home, the walls have to be painted in bright colors. Or at least, I have to be surrounded by lots of brightly colored, beautiful things. No, the walls really, actually have to be painted in bright colors. I have tried several times in my adult life to live without this, and each time, the experiment has failed. It's always the same. I buy a few things: a colorful bedspread, a whimsical piece of artwork, and feel like I have accomplished the goal of setting up a nest for myself. But it always fails. White walls make me crazy. The earth is not my home, this is sure, but it is a place to practice living real, eternal life. I must do that in a place that feels like home. I should have painted my apartment. I should've painted, and I should've bought a lot of furniture. I am not a nomad, I am not a desert father, I am an Ayodele. And Ayodeles need their houses to be decorated like Anthropologie stores.

Also, I've learned about my general lack of assertiveness. Again, this is not a new lesson. Why must I learn everything 85 times? I hate being angry; I gravitate towards tranquility. But, as I'm human, I cannot escape human emotions. I spent a lot of time this fall, during this Nativity Fast, incensed. I wonder what the etymology of the word incensed is. Anyway, I'm learning again that it is OK to be mad, that when I am angry I cannot make myself otherwise, and that the swiftest path to righteousness is speaking the truth in love. "I feel mad when you. . ." At the moment, it is nearly impossible for me to communicate anger to another person. I fear conflict, and I fear my own ability to handle anger appropriately. But I must work on this.

What does any of this have to do with the Incarnation? Well, both of these things, colored paint and assertive language, affect my ability to feel at home in my own flesh. Since I am incarnate, I cannot live peacefully if I'm always trying to just endure ugly, glaring white paint or situations that make me angry. Sometimes you just have to work to make things better, instead of trying to survive them. This is the truth.

I think this fast has made it easier to hear God when he speaks. Maybe that is what fasting is about, telling God that you're listening. Fasting is living in a posture of listening.

Speaking of my natural inclination toward extravagance, I may at least congratulate myself on the way I observed Christmas this year. Christmas is so important to me. And I love all of it. I love the shopping, and the brass bands playing "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" on the street corners, and the trees, and the lights, and the office holiday parties, and the presents. I cannot cut corners on Christmas. Lucky for me, I planned ahead this year. I put up my tree 2 days after Thanksgiving, ordered and sent out Christmas cards, and used an Advent Wreath. This is my first year using an Advent Wreath. I made it myself and everything. I will do it every year. I think lighting the Advent candles helped me to get a handle on the time. Isn't that what fasting is about? Getting a handle on the time? I knew exactly how many days it was until Christmas, and I was able to focus on the right things, like Love, Hope, and Joy--at least on Sundays. So, some part of my brain chose to act according to common sense this year. Hooray! I love the Advent season.

Now I need to go complete another Christmas tradition, and finish reading On the Incarnation.

Merry Christmas!

So Great a Cloud of Witnesses: Distracted Musings on All Saints' Day

 

“Around your throne the saints, our brothers and sisters,

sing your praise forever.

Their glory fills us with joy,

and their communion with us in your church

gives us inspiration and strength

as we hasten our pilgrimage of faith, eager to meet them.

With their great company and all the angels

we praise your glory as we cry out with one voice:

‘Holy, holy, holy…’ “

 

Thus ends Poetry Appreciation Month. It was good while it lasted. 

Today is All Saints' Day. I had so many ideas for this day. Alas, we went on a field trip. The truth is that field trips are always secretly exhausting. It's a wonder I can hold up my head right now. In other news, my best friend is getting married in 9 days. Yet another reason why I am feeling the rush of activity rather than the inner stirrings of quietude.

Last night, I read up on some saints, thought about Hebrews 11, and read bits of Revelation. I planned to watch Millions, read St. Joan, and think about people I admire: the George Muellers and the Amy Carmichaels. I wrote out a list of All Saints' Day worthy activities. Today I even wore a white dress, but forgot to feel significant feelings about it. I'm too tired to observe such a holy day.

What can I say about all of this? We know that righteousness is possible, and real. Not just for God, but for those who love him and are called according to his purpose.

What we do know is that faith is the common factor in the lives of all these holy people. . .

Without faith, it is impossible to please God. 

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Hail, Autumnal Equinox!

October is Poetry Appreciation Month, Says I

Beginning October 1st, I will imbibe one poem a day, and post it here. I shall read it, memorize it, lectio it, talk about, let it steep into my soul. It's the only proper way to hail the Autumnal Equinox. After all, Christmas is coming, and my 1st annual Advent fast will not be very meaningful if I don't slow down and steady myself before it begins.

Here is some Hopkins, as appropriate, to begin.

Hurrahing in Harvest

SUMMER ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks arise
Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour
Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier
Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?
I walk, I lift up, I lift up heart, eyes,	5
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;
And, éyes, heárt, what looks, what lips yet gave you a
Rapturous love’s greeting of realer, of rounder replies?
And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder
Majestic—as a stallion stalwart, very-violet-sweet!—	10
These things, these things were here and but the beholder
Wanting; which two when they once meet,
The heart rears wings bold and bolder
And hurls for him, O half hurls earth for him off under his feet.

 Divert my eyes from toys and trinkets, invigorate me on the pilgrim way.

Keeping the Sabbath: The Infant Christ, Lemon Meringue Pie, and One Honorable Bird

I love Christian art. I love it the way I love monasticism, liturgy, and trees. Christian art helps me sense the reality of the depth of the faith I profess. It connects me to the Church throughout time and space. I love that I can say the words "Christian Art" and conjure up images rendered long before the advent of Thomas Kincaid. I love that people have long been using art to wrestle with and build their faith. I love that art can be prayer, worship, scholarship, and contemplation. I love that beauty and creative expression are long established components of Christian worship.

Today I stayed home from church for a solitary sabbath: I slept in, had pan au chocolat, tea, and strawberries for breakfast. I compared 4 different versions of Psalm 91: in the ESV, the Message,  the Book of Common Prayer, and the Louis Segond French translation. I re-read bits of Lauren Winner's Girl Meets God, read now in the solemn mindfulness of her latest work, Still. I tried to pray Psalm 91 for a few people I've been feeling worried about, and for myself. I asked for an increase of faith.

 "His huge outstretched arms protect you—
      under them you're perfectly safe;
      his arms fend off all harm."

"Il te couvrira de ses plumes, Et tu trouveras un refuge sous ses ailes."

"He shall defend thee under his wings, and thou shalt be safe under his feathers." 

 "He will cover you with his pinions,
    and under his wings you will find refuge."

My faith is not what it ought to be. I often find it hard to pray. I often don't want to pray, and when I do pray, I find it overwhelming; I want to stop, because there are so many things to pray for.
I went to the Norton Simon, because it's only a 30 minute walk away (I took the bus) and because I imagine myself as a person who goes to art museums all the time. It involved strolling through the water lotus gardens, watching grey-green tadpoles flit and gold-orange dragonflies gleam. It involved the kid's meal: grilled cheese and a fruit salad. It involved sunshine and shady trees and lemon meringue pie. It involved trying to pick up snippets of conversation made by French tourists (vous connaissez?). It involved an attempt at deep contemplation of Christian art.
After walking the museum over, I returned to a few paintings that especially spoke to me. I realized today that I have an official favorite painting at the Norton Simon. It is "St. Joseph and the Infant Christ", by Giovanni Battista Gaulli. I think I love this painting because it radiates relationship. The whole painting is about the deep love which exists between the Christ-Child and St. Joseph, it's beautiful because St. Joseph manifests such tender love for his adopted son. It's meaningful because it reminds me of the Book of Ruth, of the Book of Revelation, of spiritual adoption, and of God's complete and substantial love for me, his adopted daughter.

But I love this painting in a sort of ironic contrast to the rest of Christian art. I realized that the most important thing about Christian art, about beholding a Christian painting, is being made to see what is not visible.
I spent a long time looking at Francesco Bissolo's "The Annunciation", a painting which depicts Mary receiving the angel Gabriel' s words into her heart, and the Christ-Child into her womb: the birth of our salvation and the Magnificat. It's a warm and lovely painting. I stared at it for a long time before realizing that the most important visible thing in that painting is an Honorable Bird: the Holy-Spirit-as-dove hovering---radiantly and slightly---at the top of the painting. The presence and power of God is often hard to see, it is even invisible sometimes, as was the unborn Christ dwelling within Mary.

This painting struck me because, as I gazed at it, I realized that the Dove of Primal Importance, the Honorable Bird, resides in me. I am the visible element in the painting, imbued with the often intangible presence of God. Wow.

But there is one more painting which today brought me closer to the contemplation of the invisible. It's "Madonna and Child with Book" by Raffaello Sanzio.

This one, while showing the incarnate body of Christ, actually points to the eternal, invisible reality of God. Mary and the Christ-Child sit reading a prayer book. Here is Christ, the one who created Mary and the entire landscape behind them, sitting in his incarnate form, reading about his future death and resurrection. Here is God, the God who always IS, rendered in the past as a child, contemplating his own future acts. At the time of the painting, all the work of redemption had been accomplished--Christ was seated on the throne in heaven, interceding for us: it is a meditation piece concerned with the constant presence, the constant being, of God. It is eternity past, present, and future all in one. Here is Mary, teaching her son about his own nature, as he sits in her arms, the arms that he himself created as the "Firstborn of all creation". God very God, here with us as creator, redeemer, and word. Here is the description given with the painting:

"The inscription in the book introduces the ninth hour, or Nones of the Canonical Offices, recited daily by all monastic communities. The Nones commemorates Christ's Crucifixion and Death. With eyes turned to heaven, the Christ Child contemplates His own sacrifice as man's Redeemer."

I need to see Christian art. I need to present my eyes with things that invite them to believe and worship: it's so good for my soul. So today church was held in an airy museum, and the Eucharist was a slice of lemon meringue pie, imbibed under the acrylic gazes of penitents St. Francis and St. Jerome.

Tea Time in the Interior Castle

Sometimes it's hard to write. I've been meaning to come back to this stupid blog, again and again, with book reviews or spiritual musings, but it's hard. The hardest thing about living life--real, deep, pure life--is stopping still--standing still--long enough to do so. I know that if I don't write I'll die, I know that for me writing is a form of prayer.

Sometimes life is difficult. Sometimes just doing the bare minimum takes all of my strength. What do I have to say tonight? I'm not sure I know. I've been mulling over the will of God, thinking about what it means to live as God means me to live. Sometimes, it seems simple. Sometimes, I know what I'm called to do. Sometimes, I can tell somehow that God is calling me, leading me deeper into him, and that deep inside his love I will be moved to live a wild and beautiful life.

O, how I want to be pulled into the deep, deep love of God! It's much easier, much safer, much more comfortable to live in the shallows--but I can't stay here forever, because I'll die of thirst. Today I read George Mueller's words about knowing God, about how increasing in the knowledge of God is synonymous with increasing in personal happiness. To the degree that I know God I am happy. To the degree that I doubt God, I am misery personified.

I want to know God. I want to live with him in his life and die with him in his death. But sometimes this feels impossible.

Last week, as I was contemplating life, happiness, and the love of God with a dear friend, she told me that I needed to get my act together because I was supposed to be her "spiritual and wise" friend. I know that I'm supposed to be spiritual and wise. I also know that I rarely live up to this calling. It's hard to live a life of being.

I ought to live deeply. My soul was made for depth, and not breadth, stillness, and not movement. I should dwell inside the sonnet, I should hear the breathy wailing of the wind, I should see every star. My heart would keep well in a cloister.

I'm sitting here, imbibing honeydew green tea and listening to music, because, tonight, this is the closest I can bring myself to stillness, to real life.

As I look around my bedroom, I see the proof, the evidence, of who God is calling me to be. Quotations from St. Julian of Norwich, Emily Dickinson, Brennan Manning, Rumi, Mahmoud Darwish, the Psalms, Sadhu Sundar Singh, and many others line my walls. Icon valentines of St. Brigid of Ireland and Mary the Mother of God are on my mantel. A watercolor portrait of my own face, encompassed by golden halo and wings of inspiration, hangs above a bookshelf.

Looking at all of these things--congregation of word & image, delicate, brightly bound, palm-sized volumes of The Imitation of Christ and The Book of Common Prayer--I see clearly that I am meant to live the life of a contemplative. God, help me to live this life. Imbued with your spirit, sensitive to your voice, obedient and faithful, keep me aware of mystery and beauty wherever it exists. Keep me close to Love, where you are, on the other side of silence.

A Living, Rushing Wind: On Creativity

Even in California, it's springtime. Birds are singing from the depths of their quick-beating, tiny bird hearts.

I'm re-reading Madeleine L'Engle's Walking on Water, and I'm discovering reality again. Why do I, a creative person, produce so little? Why isn't all of my free time given to writing diligently, like I ought to do? It's because I often choose to consume rather than to create.

Every day, every moment, I have to choose between consumption and creativity. I rarely choose creativity. In this materialistic world, it's really, really easy to waste your life consuming things instead of creating them.

When a person creates they are giving life, adding cosmos/truth/beauty to the world. When a person consumes they are using up resources--killing and destroying--ushering in a state of chaos. Cooking, reading, writing, loving, praying, worshiping--these create. Shopping, eating, Facebook, watching The Office, hating--these consume.

 Facebook and shopping are not evil, but they take away from the world. I am a consumer of life. Most of my existence has been spent taking.

Perhaps it's a question of balance. Consuming is all right, some forms of it are all right, if most of my life is spent creating. 

I think creativity is a way--a quite natural and simple way--to give to the world. The problem is that creativity is often difficult, exhausting, and frustrating, while consumption is easy and entertaining.

But, I would be a life-giver.

Creating is life giving, and holy, because it is an aspect of God's own Self. God benevolently gives. He lives. He creates life. If we are to reflect his nature, we too must create generously. Creation is an act of worship because to create is to imitate God's nature, and what is more worshipful than living in imitation of the One you adore?

It is much, much easier to consume when I come home tired at the end of a long day. To create I must be ready and attentive. It's hard to push past all of the noise and movement until I reach that still place, the still point, where creativity comes like a rushing wind.


Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things, and give me life in your ways.

My Tender Pioneer: On Work and Leisure

Life—is what we make of it—
Death—we do not know—
Christ's acquaintance with Him
Justify Him—though—

He—would trust no stranger—
Other—could betray—
Just His own endorsement—
That—sufficeth Me—

All the other Distance
He hath traversed first—
No New Mile remaineth—
Far as Paradise—

His sure foot preceding—
Tender Pioneer—
Base must be the Coward
Dare not venture—now— 

Emily Dickinson

What is life, but to be near you?

 Do you think Jesus ever sought entertainment for himself when he was bored? Was he ever bored?

 I am a base coward.

Thoughts. I'm sure I have them. This week I've been wallowing in worldliness. Instead of attending to pain and emptiness, letting those things bring me to a better place, closer to the heart of God, I watched a couple seasons of The Office. Yes, that's what I did. During college, when every Christian I knew was watching the Office, I saw only two episodes of that show. Once, the British version during my study abroad in Oxford, and the second time, the American version, the following summer. When things are cool I do not care for them. That being said, why is it that the sight of the first 4 seasons of the Office sitting on my roommate's bookcase became the opiate for the masses of my weariness? When I don't even like television? In college, there were some memorable discussions about the nature of rest, work, and leisure. It makes sense now, these talks we had. I'm harkening back to one class session on the Autobiography of Frederick Douglass and one class lecture on Josef Pieper's Leisure, The Basis Of Culture, specifically. I have not yet read Pieper's work, though I ought to.

The general idea is this. Work and leisure are both times of productive, abundant activity. Leisure is a time for creativity and culture. According to both Douglass and Pieper, at no time should one's soul be deadened or one's intellect dulled. Life--rushing, brilliant life--should happen all the time. Leisure is not idleness: no more is it debauchery, no more is it dissipation. Leisure is contemplative, creative work.

Douglass' narrative describes the slaves' holidays: the slave masters offered up their slaves to drunken tomfoolery, knowing that just as backbreaking labor could not be sustained indefinitely, neither could Bacchic celebration. These kinds of tactics made the slaves happy to go back to their slavery, deceived into believing that leisure, or freedom, was not a good to be desired.

We talked in class about how Western culture follows this exact principle. Work too hard in your 9-5, give up all of yourself--too much of yourself--to your career, but then, the weekend comes. On the weekend, or even the day's end, pushed past healthy limits of productiveness, you seek drunkenness, sex, noise: any manner of over-the-top "leisure" to bring you back to balance. "Leisure" exists to make you forget that the rest of the week you have lived as a slave.

This, sometimes, is how I live. I don't really drink and I don't sleep around--I truly hate noise--but this is America: there are lots of opportunities for dissipation. This week, I chose to bludgeon my senses with the Office and too much Panang curry, instead of drowning my heart and soaking my spirit in a couple yellow mango margaritas and a one-night stand.

I need to live differently. Please understand, I love my job. I love my job as much as I could love a "for the time being until I figure out where I'm going to go to grad school and how to make a living not being a computer programmer/engineer/doctor/lawyer/physicist". It could just be that I'm too tired for the work that I do, that I'm not really up to it, or that this week was especially difficult. Or, it could be that I approach my job with the wrong attitude, that while I enjoy it, what I'm really waiting for is the weekend, or the end of the day, so I can "really" live. The problem with this is that when I get home I'm too spent (this is exactly the right word) to live according to my creative, child-of-God nature. I ought to be writing. I ought to be preparing papers to present at conferences, I ought to have friends over to cook or bake, and I ought to be baking and cooking whether or not anyone else is here. I ought to be reading poetry, trudging through French short stories, and cultivating my awareness of God's presence and favor. I ought to be building community with my roommate. I ought to be working on low-stress craft projects.

But this isn't what happens, or it is not what happened this week, when I come home.

When I come home I need to throw off the world, peel it off like a soiled skin, throw it outside to be burned, locking the door tight. I need to let my soul expand, and then feed it nourishing food. Steve Carrell cannot do this for me. Only Jesus can. There is something about satire, about watching other people live and work and worry, that is comforting (in a bad way) to my soul on a weekday evening. But what if I had instead written more on this blog? What would I have discovered? What if, in a week spent reading Lauren Winner's latest book about embracing life in the middle, I had actually been brave enough to live in the middle of my own twenty-something angst?

Sometimes I worry about the things I miss.

 I did read my Bible everyday. That's something. And I liked it. That's something else.

I want to be like St. Therese of Lisieux. I want to like only what God likes.

I need to do work-work and leisure-work more joyfully.

For next time. . .on bearing fruit and needing to be buried in the earth before you do.

Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things (turn my heart from wanting to watch the Office) and give me life in your ways.

Lent: Bad at it

To know you only
my soul disappears.
I tire of glimpsing you
in dusty mirrors.
The beauty in the world I know
is only ugliness to me
if you I cannot see.
pregnant with your love,
I climb.
But on this narrow stair,
I recall how fair,
the vanities of this world are.
And I find the path too steep,
the pain too deep—
to keep on looking for you.
I tear my hands—clutching
at blossoms—truly,
only—thorns in my side.
My pride
woos me to stay,
while fears
—heavy iron spurs—
slacken my steps,
protecting me from truth,
making my cup—a pulsing star—
overflowing with your joys,
bitter and black,
—gall and tar.
Drop!
Drop!
Your blood in my cup.
Shine
Shine
(your light in my eyes).
The water of life rushing
in my ears
the currents rise,
and carry me along,
so strong your rivers are.
Your song now
palatable—I float
my ascent, swallowing
mouthfuls of your words.
As the earth revolves
so I spin, turned by you
the One who moves.
Sugar and sadness in
my hymn, I begin to tune
my lips to your unchanging
symphony.
Clutching to the drifting sun,
I wash up on your
golden shore—
and I can't remember anymore
anything brighter than your face.

Lenten Preparations

I'm trying to decide what I should give up for Lent. This will be my second year actually observing all forty days. It's so strange to consider giving up something I'd rather keep. It's also strange because I remember how very endless Lent felt last year, and how the best part of that experience, was growing in an awareness of my own wickedness. It's terrible to contemplate one's faults. But, this is the point I think. I want to give up an unnecessary thing that I have come to believe is necessary. Something I turn to for comfort, entertainment, or solace instead of turning to God, or simply sitting in the presence of my own emptiness. There are some options spinning around in my head right now, but I sometimes find it hard to choose wise self-denial over masochism. I also learned last year that fasts really reconfigure human relationships. If I give up, say, going to the movies, or eating out, then I'm denying pleasures for other human beings besides myself. Lent is great, I tell you, because it also made me aware that my actions happen in community. Maybe I should just decide to do everything more slowly. I want this year to be about slowing down in meaningful ways. I want to calmly savor life, instead of swallowing it whole and running for the door.

Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things, and give me life in your ways.

Vision of The Grotesque & The Beautiful

I hate ugliness. I hate ugliness so much that I try not to see it, to hear it, to smell it, or to conceive of it in any way that reveals its presence to me. I look at the world through a lens that denies the presence of what is ugly. No, not a vision of denial, but a vision of discontent. I look at things only to wish them more beautiful. I see wilting roses and picture them whole, full, devoid of brownish edges or insect perforations. It extends to all my senses. I attempt to keep out of my ears the noises of the world--television, radio stations, muzak in grocery stores--noise being its own kind of ugliness. There is a large medical building in my city painted a tawdry muddy-orange color. It makes me angry, it might have been prettier.

This vision of discontent, of continual demand for perfection from an imperfect world, may be a gift. Otherwise, it is my own ugliness. An ugliness that wants always to deny the imperfections of real things. It's not a blindness, it's a judging vision. It's been said that prophets are afflicted with divine discontent, and I like to believe that it is this affliction I bear. This kind of affliction made people like Amy Carmichael and George Mueller take in hundreds of street children, it's the kind that fuels abolition movements and unreasonable demands for justice--because these people were dissatisfied with what is. Lately though, I am in doubt.

This week I finished Mystery and Manners, a posthumous collection of prose by Flannery O' Connor. I love St. Flannery for so many reasons. First, because she is an excellent writer. Second, because she is right about everything. Third, because her own spiritual and artistic vision is so perfectly shaped and presented. She has left nothing out. This being said, it is disconcerting to be at odds with Flannery in my own way of looking at the world. But then, maybe I am not. Flannery is all about observation: she is concerned with looking at and recognizing what is present in the natural world in order to faithfully reveal its link to supernature. Nature pairs with grace & mystery with manners, Flannery tells us. Thus, her vision of the world involves judgment, because she sees the ultimate reality of the Triune God making himself known to us. And, along with this, she sees the rebellion and misery of humanity in fighting against this, its own perfect end. But what strikes me most is that Flannery concerns herself so much with seeing what is there and presenting exactly this to the reader. Her characters are often people who are physically ugly, as well as being spiritually so. Perhaps this is where our vision differs. I see what is there and in my own mind's eye strive to correct, to improve, to soften it's garishness. Flannery even extols the benefits of drawing classes for young novelists, drawing being an activity that helps you to see what is there. Flannery's thorough perception recognizes what is there and serves it to you raw and unedited--grotesque humanity on a silver platter of truth.

Do I shun the grotesque? Or do I, like Flannery, see the world and human nature in it's impoverished state and yearn for what it ought to be? For what it may be? In my view of the world do I miss something? Am I ignoring the downtrodden? The broken-hearted? The least of these?

The smelly, filthy, homeless, disabled man on the bus is grotesque. I sit with him in a vehicle with large, glassy windows that let in the light. Together we travel, our lives drowned out under the roar of the engine. But I sit there because I can't escape. I politely breathe through my mouth instead of covering my nose so that he will not realize the smell of him makes me afraid. I look at him and think detached, philosophical thoughts about humanity and its depravity. Is that the way to look at the grotesque? I sit there with him and think about other things, with my nose stuck in a book, ignoring the present scents of disaster and decay to picture clean skin, beds of lavender, rain-washed air.

To see the grotesque do I have to love it? Or merely embrace its presence? Are loving and embracing one act?

Am I looking for the good beneath the ugliness? Or am I simply trying to recognize and greet the presence of the ugly?

I know it is wrong to only love what is beautiful. Or rather, is it wrong to love what only appears beautiful? Love is not concerned, perhaps, with the goodness of the thing loved; but with willing and bringing good to the object of the love.

And what am I to think of my own grotesqueness? God does not love me because I am beautiful. He loves me even though I am ugly. And in this love his beauty is communicated to me. If the call is merely to love, then my response ought to be constant, loving, attentiveness.

Yes! This is it, attention well paid, a certain homage performed. A recognition of presence. The presence of the grotesque.


and the real always trumps the imagined
as the invisible transcends the perceived


Are perfection, beauty, & goodness the result of that loving attentiveness? Do I look at what is and love it because it ought to be higher? Love it for what it could be? Love it to make it rise?

I am on a quest to use my imaginative faculty for good. I want to know how to see what is there, but not in a dull complacency that makes me wring my hands. Nor in a zeal for perfection that makes me sweep over any good concealed. Rather, I want to cultivate a welcoming attentiveness that helps me to see the good that is present--for what is good is better than what is beautiful. I think.


Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things and give me life in your ways.