Urban Climbing solves everything.
Now I have a scraped knee and left hand, a bruised right hand, soaked and dirty pants, numb fingers and am blissfully happy despite. I had laughter, terror, adrenaline, muscular exertion, comraderie, and even a bit of shame at rebuke. Conclusion: the external features of the college building are therapeutic if used properly with people who know what they are doing. (Don't explore the conditional statement in that sentence too closely.)
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Falling Up
Oh, dear reader. I just don't know where to start.
Why does it take 20 minutes to translate two verses of John 2?
Why do I have a week and a half to write two term papers and yet have no motivation, even though I find the topics interesting?
Why does the term paper draft I have attempted simply seem to repeat the same vocabulary in different arrangements through all 8 pages?
Why can't I sleep at night and why am I so tired in the morning?
Why in the world did every third person I made eye contact with during my hour long walk stare at me like I was from outer space?
Why is my left first metatarsal-phalange joint swollen and sore every time I walk?
Why in the world did I fall up the stairs instead of down, and how in the world could I fall up hard enough to produce a huge painful lump on my patella?
I'm not really frustrated, merely mildly inquisitive. My lack of frustration is itself something curiously annoying. I really need (or want) some time of my own to sort things out. I feel as if I can't produce anything worthwhile simply because I haven't had enough time to process all the information and come to conclusions.
All said, I'm ready to come home and smell the kids. I really wouldn't mind just working in a garden or barn for a few months with a few smart people to verbally ruminate with. I feel as if either I've overdosed on information or I've undergone so many paradigm shifts that the information just doesn't have many hooks to hang on anymore. I need to re-evaluate.
What Falls Up, Must Fall Down. But how do I know whether my sensation of weight is due to gravity or due to another force? (Einstein: I can't)
Why does it take 20 minutes to translate two verses of John 2?
Why do I have a week and a half to write two term papers and yet have no motivation, even though I find the topics interesting?
Why does the term paper draft I have attempted simply seem to repeat the same vocabulary in different arrangements through all 8 pages?
Why can't I sleep at night and why am I so tired in the morning?
Why in the world did every third person I made eye contact with during my hour long walk stare at me like I was from outer space?
Why is my left first metatarsal-phalange joint swollen and sore every time I walk?
Why in the world did I fall up the stairs instead of down, and how in the world could I fall up hard enough to produce a huge painful lump on my patella?
I'm not really frustrated, merely mildly inquisitive. My lack of frustration is itself something curiously annoying. I really need (or want) some time of my own to sort things out. I feel as if I can't produce anything worthwhile simply because I haven't had enough time to process all the information and come to conclusions.
All said, I'm ready to come home and smell the kids. I really wouldn't mind just working in a garden or barn for a few months with a few smart people to verbally ruminate with. I feel as if either I've overdosed on information or I've undergone so many paradigm shifts that the information just doesn't have many hooks to hang on anymore. I need to re-evaluate.
What Falls Up, Must Fall Down. But how do I know whether my sensation of weight is due to gravity or due to another force? (Einstein: I can't)
Friday, March 27, 2009
Little Mother
Someone please explain to me why I am attempting to write about boys at 1:44am... I only know that it seems important to me that I sacrifice a few hours of sleep to write this down before I forget the lines of thought.
Some of you more than others have heard me comment on or discuss my love of boys. I purposefully use 'boys' instead of 'guys,' 'young men,' or any other term indicative of slightly grown male humans. Why? Because I have come to recognize that I only truly, honestly, and freely relate to the older members of the opposite sex through the little child inside of each one.
Since my early childhood, a large tender spot in a corner of my heart has belonged to boys. They creep in in a way girls don't. I sympathize with girls, but with them I normally share but a mutual understanding (except the closest friends). The boys, on the other hand, awaken a warmth of boisterious camraderie unlike feminine fellowship. It is a warmth hard to describe - especially to young women who do not share the attitude. It is feeling motherly without smothering, less of a female friend than a sister, yet not so much a sister as a young aunt or adolescent grandmother.
One of the most healing aspects of my time at Augustine College has been (what I think of as) regaining "my boys." You see - and there is a post of greater depth in the works on this topic - my boys were my life between kindergarten and fourth grade. I made friends (sometimes rather artificially) with girls because it was 'proper,' but the little men were my comrades and I doted on them even as I darted with them through recess games of freeze tag, kick the can, and eventually soccer.
One of my most cherished memories, fixed in my mind forever, is a scene of crouching inconspicuously to avoid "It" atop the wooden platform whence met slides, swings, tire bridges (and all manner of fun objects of bounce) evesdropping the conversation of two boyish classmates directly beneath me. They had just paused from the chase in a game of tag.
"You know, Sarah's as good as any boy. You wouldn't know she was a girl," commented Ronald. Zachary (oh, how I always giggled inwardly with delight when eluding him) nodded and agreed. From then on, I never felt the least bit of uncertainty about joining my little male peers in games and pursuits - on the contrary, I felt as though I had earned a place among them. They were mine - not by virtue of me owning them or having power over them, but they had taken me up among themselves and just as I gave myself to them, they gave themself to me in a way I never saw them interact with my girlish classmates.
Some of you more than others have heard me comment on or discuss my love of boys. I purposefully use 'boys' instead of 'guys,' 'young men,' or any other term indicative of slightly grown male humans. Why? Because I have come to recognize that I only truly, honestly, and freely relate to the older members of the opposite sex through the little child inside of each one.
Since my early childhood, a large tender spot in a corner of my heart has belonged to boys. They creep in in a way girls don't. I sympathize with girls, but with them I normally share but a mutual understanding (except the closest friends). The boys, on the other hand, awaken a warmth of boisterious camraderie unlike feminine fellowship. It is a warmth hard to describe - especially to young women who do not share the attitude. It is feeling motherly without smothering, less of a female friend than a sister, yet not so much a sister as a young aunt or adolescent grandmother.
One of the most healing aspects of my time at Augustine College has been (what I think of as) regaining "my boys." You see - and there is a post of greater depth in the works on this topic - my boys were my life between kindergarten and fourth grade. I made friends (sometimes rather artificially) with girls because it was 'proper,' but the little men were my comrades and I doted on them even as I darted with them through recess games of freeze tag, kick the can, and eventually soccer.
One of my most cherished memories, fixed in my mind forever, is a scene of crouching inconspicuously to avoid "It" atop the wooden platform whence met slides, swings, tire bridges (and all manner of fun objects of bounce) evesdropping the conversation of two boyish classmates directly beneath me. They had just paused from the chase in a game of tag.
"You know, Sarah's as good as any boy. You wouldn't know she was a girl," commented Ronald. Zachary (oh, how I always giggled inwardly with delight when eluding him) nodded and agreed. From then on, I never felt the least bit of uncertainty about joining my little male peers in games and pursuits - on the contrary, I felt as though I had earned a place among them. They were mine - not by virtue of me owning them or having power over them, but they had taken me up among themselves and just as I gave myself to them, they gave themself to me in a way I never saw them interact with my girlish classmates.
But then, I began homeschooling. The first year of homeschooling, I was fairly cut off from "my boys." My dearest cousin David (the best friend of my earliest childhood) was off in far lands. My classmates had been shed for siblings. Our family had not joined a homeschool co-op yet and I was not impressed with the majority of my church peers (in addition, I had quit Sunday School, opting for Adult Bible Class with Mom and Dad). Basically, the only boyish interaction left open to me was in the realm of 4H. But I was new to 4H and friends there came slowly. (Grandpa can attest to my tears both with the goat and with my shyness in the first year or so of Goat Club.) Eventually, as I became familiar with the members and came into my own in Caprine knowledge and skill, camraderie grew to the point that I actually point out my experience in 4H Goat Club as one of the greatest blessings of fellowship with hardworking youth (male and female) of my life. "My boys" are in 4H too, but it took some time to get to know them.
Before I could fully grow into comfortable 4H relationships, something else happened which proved a turning point in my social life. My male peers suddenly turned skittish. The boys I had known in church, in school, even my returned cousins, started treating girls as something to be avoided. The fact that I wanted to share their fun didn't help things. Girls were uncool. No longer was I "as good as any boy." Rejection hurt. "My boys" were turning themselves into "those boys." Alternatives slim, I turned more fully to the girls I once disdained. God blessed me with a core group of Christian girl friends with whom I shared laughter, tears, earth, work, play, and hours of discussion. To be sure, we discussed boys. We were, after all, pre and adolescent females and we were curious about the strange behavior of the opposite sex. Together, we grew into adolescence, learning and discussing our lives, futures, hopes, dreams, fears, problems, and particularly our roles as Christians and as women.
And as I grew into adolescent understanding, I began to tentatively venture into interaction with boys again, but not in the previous sense. Oh, to be sure I would most always take the younger guys into the "my boys" tender spot of my heart, but I was very, very careful to hold males of my age and older purposefully at arms length. You see, my friends and I had marked the fashion in which many girls of our age flung themselves at the boys for attention. I was determined neither to lower myself nor the boys in such a manner. Though boys had become incomprehensible, I respected them and wished them to respect me. Because I loved them, I tiptoed around them very, very cautiously. In retrospect, I doubt they even noticed my silent token of respect.
Girl though I was, Woman I was becoming, and as Girl-becoming-Woman my heart developed another niche for the young male. It crept on quite unawares and proved to be a more painful, if sharper and more passionate throne. I was unsure how to treat it and unlike the "my boys" tenderness which expanded and drew all in with warm glow, the "laddie throne" could fit only one at a time. It caught me quite unawares and naive to it's rolling surge. Convinced that the emotion was untimely, I simply bottled it, recounted it to my trusted group of girl friends, and waited. Any action on my part, I deemed, would be improper. Besides, I was young, I could afford to let Time run its course and work its changes.
Needless to say, (or perhaps needful) most interactions with guys older than I proved rather stilted, simply because I wanted to leave the lad without any ambiguouties about the pure friendliness of the exchange. Gradually, I learned to relax - especially as I grew to know each individual better. Free and light teasing came back to a certain extent. But whenever another girl by action or word seemed to insinuate that another dimension might be added to relationships, I tensed up completely, sometimes even withdrawing from conversation with any guys involved. Not wishing to step on toes, I stepped off the dance floor completely.
This left me two possible sources of guilt-free, comfortable masculine interaction: lads younger than I and peers without aspiring girls or audiences of romance-plotting adults. If you as a male of my age had a girl friend, any indication of one, or an overly enthusiastic parent I wouldn't talk to you much. This left me feeling quite frustrated to put it rather mildly. I felt all tied up - bound and gagged as it were. Or in more extreme language, like I was walking a tightrope with a gun to my head: one false move and toast would I be.
But I did not need to live this way. I can see it now. Many wise people whom I highly esteem had advised me in the same vein, but I did not understand what they meant. My problem was not in the interactions themselves, but in my mode of engagement. I had by default treated every lad of peer age in respect to the "laddie throne" instead of in terms of "my boys." I was terrified of public opinion because I was certain all would regard me very poorly if I did not build a solid, if unwonted and unwanted, hedge between me and the lad in question. Alas! I tend to lay more weight on what others think of me than I ought.
The Augustine boys have restored me to my elementary school mindset. They have become "my boys." Perhaps the fact that three of them have girlfriends already yet still sought camraderie prompted me to open up to them. They are all like brothers to me here. They treat me not as a boy, but as a girl - but a girl who is a friend in the best sense of the word. And they've squirmed their little boy way into my tender regard. In that warm corner, I see "my boys" not as strange incomprehensible males, but as little laddies. They're all still so much the small boy with the big eyes, the sensitive little heart so easily crushed, the silly rashness, the funny sayings, the undeserved admiration and comical but charming generosity.
I tease them - sometimes to the point where I am ashamed of myself and afraid that I have perhaps wounded them more than they would care to admit. I make them food. I laugh with them and at their antics. I make them food just to see the happy hungry look in their puppy eyes. If they ask me to do something, I usually go along with it. They're my little Frederick and Justinian in 18 year old bodies - how could I say no?
In return, they have given me such affection to fill the tender spot in my heart to overflowing, bubbling up and over. Especially in the last few days I've been blessed to experience the fruits of boyish love. A day or so ago, I was vested with Slapping Authority. It went something like this. I and the boys were lingering in the kitchen making small talk and snacking after class. Somewhere in the conversation someone made a crude remark. "Quiet! There's a lady present." admonished one of them, a trifle ironically. "Hasn't stopped you so far," I observed a bit sarcastically. There was a quarter moment of silence before one of them broke forth with a wonderful new idea. Over the course of the next day, whenever I heard any sort of profanity, I was to calmly rise, walk over to the offender and slap him across the cheek with equal equanimity, then sit back down. We made it a deal. As they prepared to walk out the door, J. turned back. (I paraphrase)
"You know, Sarah, I like how you keep us accountable. You're kinda like a...a little... I want to say sister but more like a mother. But that wouldn't sound right - a little mother." We all laughed.
But reflecting on the term put me exactly in mind of what is different about the "my boys" attitude. I had heard the words "little mother" before, many times. Like many great illustrations of love, I encountered it in Emmuska Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel.
"Listen to the tale, Sir Percy," she said, and her voice now was low, sweet, infinitely tender. "Armand was all in all to me! We had no parents, and brought one another up. He was my little father, and I, his tiny mother: we loved one another so. Then one day -- do you mind me, Sir Percy? The Marquis de St. Cyr had my brother thrashed - thrashed by his lacqueys -- that brother whom I loved better than all the world! ... Oh, how I suffered! his humiliation had eaten into my very soul! When the opportunity occurred and I was able to take my revenge, I took it... When I realized what I had done, it was too late."
Now, I am most certainly not saying that the motherly/sisterly love I have for boys is as passionate as Marguerite's for Armand or that it takes revenge for them, but there is a certain relevance in the love of these siblings to that of which I here speak. The little boys in grownup bodies are neither my little brothers, nor like big brothers, nor like unattached men. It is a different relationship all together. Perhaps they are more like little uncles than little fathers, but that is beside the point. Whether I am truly like a "little mother" to them or not, we do love one another and I am not ashamed to admit it. God help me never to be ashamed of loving my fellow man (or woman) again! When they are glad, their gladness makes me glad - glad that they are glad and glad in their gladness. When they sorrow, I feel grief for them even if I know not why they are grumpy or even if they have a right to be grumpy. When they pull an all nighter - I feel a tad guilty going to sleep knowing that "my boys" are working into the night. When they fall asleep in class, the tiredness catches at me too. When they climb buildings, sing silly songs, talk about dogma and whatever they joy in, I laugh inside (and often out loud) not in derision but for the sheer passionate energy they put into what they do - even into being sluggish.
God has granted me to once more know and love my brothers as I have learned to know and love my sisters. It is a blessing in estimable to me.
And their kindness overwhelms me at times: like today. I was having a rather icky day. I was out of sorts, worn out and just feeling at the end of my last bit of energy. (Ha! that is why I am still typing at 4:27 am!) After Literature class, I sat down on the stairs too ambivalent to continue either up or down. In my own fashion at such times, I started randomly commenting on my emotional state to myself and the general audience in a sporadic flow of consciousness fashion. K. came over and patted me on the shoulder and asked if I wanted to pray. That kindness pretty much broke the dam: I broke out weeping. It felt so very good to weep. I managed to politely escape to my room to gasp out the deep sobs for about five minutes and then everything was "all better." Between Scriptures and Chapel, I curled up in a big armchair to take a nap with a blanket. The next thing I knew, J. had come over and tucked the blanket in around me. I couldn't help but smile. Little boys have surprisingly good aiding instincts even if they do follow them awkwardly at times. (Girls, we must commend them for too often we do not even have the instinct to help and we avoid awkwardness by not acting when we do.)
One more thing and then I must sleep. This looking at young men through the little boy inside of them has really changed the whole way I watch movies too. The girls and I watched the 2 hr Pride and Predjudice tonight. I winced for Darcy almost every time Elizabeth spoke to him. Granted he was proud, granted he was disdainful: he was still a little boy inside, struggling desperately to figure out what to do with his great big manly frame and words. She was witty, well in command of her body - if not of her heart completely - utterly intimidating. We might converse with one another with greater understanding, causing less pain, if we recognized and held dear the tiny trembling child inside each of us.
4:43am Ha! Sleep.... Blah. Glad Classes were canceled tomorrow.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Peace and Rest?
In life no house, no home
My Lord on earth might have;
In death no friendly tomb
But what a stranger gave.
What may I say?
Heav'n was His home
But mine the tomb
Wherein He lay.
Just saying, I want home. According to my sinful condition, I am dissatisfied and I want to be satisfied now. But God's time is perfect. Truly, "mine was the tomb wherein He lay" just as His was the Heaven to whence I go by Christ's grace. If I feel homesick now, I know that my homesickness was itself taken up by Jesus in His life. And the time away from home, even the dull ache of separation is not meaningless or for no purpose. So I will try to occupy this time in doing what it was set aside to do - even if my soul is once more restless, seemingly longing for lands southwest. Sometimes, I am suspicious whether I deceive myself in thus identifying the restless longing. Or to put it another way, what am I really yearning for? Am I simply afraid to name the source and end of my longing for fear of what that would mean? Am I simply unwilling to face what that would (in my perception) cost me? Could it be, like Dr. Patrick said today, that I am thankful to God for salvation so that now I can go do my own thing? I love to set the agenda (have since I wrote agendas for 4H meetings). I hate not having a plan, a list of things to do which I think are reasonable, with which I concur, which I can carry out just as I see fit. This is just as true when someone else sets the agenda - if I can work alone and do the job they assign in my own way, I'm fine, even if I grumble a bit. But I don't like uncertainty. I don't being vulnerable. I like plan B, C, D down through Z. Even if I in certain situations I don't look farther than the next day, it is because in the grand scheme of things, the situation doesn't matter that much to me, not because I want to be governed by another. I like other authorities to make out the plan - you see, I'm lazy - but I want the 'freedom' to do as I please with the plan.
But how does one then live? I'm not talking about action, but attitude which surely informs action. However, I cannot fix the action without fixing the attitude. Yet I lack the power to fix the attitude. Further, I'm not even certain that I understand even what the proper attitude looks like, what it would be. To be Buberish, I think that I long to stand in relation. Yet to stand in relation is to be vulnerable. I want to see God face to face through clear, bullet-proof plastic. I want to treat Him as an "It"- a Thing, a thing that I take from, that I experience, an object of a goal directed verb whose subject is me. But as long as the shield is up, as long as I'm in 'experiencing mode' and not in 'relation of being mode' (to use Martin Buber expressions as I understand them) I cannot "enjoy" (in St. Augustine sense) the relation I long for.
I can't go on (writing or thinking). This might make no sense. I know what I mean, but how, oh how delicately is meaning bound up in packets of sound, in symbols on a page! Here is the mystery of human communication: not only can we express volition to one another or intent to act, but somehow mysteriously we are given the grace to formulate Ideas and abstract pictures and not only formulate them, but also share them precariously with other humans through a heavily nuanced medium. Language is simple, yet not so. It's beauty lies in representation. One of the cruelest, basest twists of the rack of contemporary culture on language is reducing all words to mean nothing.
We have used both sacred speech and vulgarity as a metaphor; now neither sacred nor vulgar mean anything but ejaculations for the sake of noise of some creature whose only form of communication is emoting through such things. We have not given words new meanings: we have taken their meaning from them. In meaning anything and everything that the speaker feels, the words mean nothing.
Oh, is even this expressed? Am I communicating? It is not the words that fail me. It is I that have failed the words. If one uses a bucket as a hammer or a hoe as a bread-knife, what does one achieve but the breaking of these tools. We have failed to understand the function proper to each word. We have bent them to other uses. No wonder they fail us.
Uh, Oh. Supper Time. ...
My Lord on earth might have;
In death no friendly tomb
But what a stranger gave.
What may I say?
Heav'n was His home
But mine the tomb
Wherein He lay.
Just saying, I want home. According to my sinful condition, I am dissatisfied and I want to be satisfied now. But God's time is perfect. Truly, "mine was the tomb wherein He lay" just as His was the Heaven to whence I go by Christ's grace. If I feel homesick now, I know that my homesickness was itself taken up by Jesus in His life. And the time away from home, even the dull ache of separation is not meaningless or for no purpose. So I will try to occupy this time in doing what it was set aside to do - even if my soul is once more restless, seemingly longing for lands southwest. Sometimes, I am suspicious whether I deceive myself in thus identifying the restless longing. Or to put it another way, what am I really yearning for? Am I simply afraid to name the source and end of my longing for fear of what that would mean? Am I simply unwilling to face what that would (in my perception) cost me? Could it be, like Dr. Patrick said today, that I am thankful to God for salvation so that now I can go do my own thing? I love to set the agenda (have since I wrote agendas for 4H meetings). I hate not having a plan, a list of things to do which I think are reasonable, with which I concur, which I can carry out just as I see fit. This is just as true when someone else sets the agenda - if I can work alone and do the job they assign in my own way, I'm fine, even if I grumble a bit. But I don't like uncertainty. I don't being vulnerable. I like plan B, C, D down through Z. Even if I in certain situations I don't look farther than the next day, it is because in the grand scheme of things, the situation doesn't matter that much to me, not because I want to be governed by another. I like other authorities to make out the plan - you see, I'm lazy - but I want the 'freedom' to do as I please with the plan.
But how does one then live? I'm not talking about action, but attitude which surely informs action. However, I cannot fix the action without fixing the attitude. Yet I lack the power to fix the attitude. Further, I'm not even certain that I understand even what the proper attitude looks like, what it would be. To be Buberish, I think that I long to stand in relation. Yet to stand in relation is to be vulnerable. I want to see God face to face through clear, bullet-proof plastic. I want to treat Him as an "It"- a Thing, a thing that I take from, that I experience, an object of a goal directed verb whose subject is me. But as long as the shield is up, as long as I'm in 'experiencing mode' and not in 'relation of being mode' (to use Martin Buber expressions as I understand them) I cannot "enjoy" (in St. Augustine sense) the relation I long for.
I can't go on (writing or thinking). This might make no sense. I know what I mean, but how, oh how delicately is meaning bound up in packets of sound, in symbols on a page! Here is the mystery of human communication: not only can we express volition to one another or intent to act, but somehow mysteriously we are given the grace to formulate Ideas and abstract pictures and not only formulate them, but also share them precariously with other humans through a heavily nuanced medium. Language is simple, yet not so. It's beauty lies in representation. One of the cruelest, basest twists of the rack of contemporary culture on language is reducing all words to mean nothing.
We have used both sacred speech and vulgarity as a metaphor; now neither sacred nor vulgar mean anything but ejaculations for the sake of noise of some creature whose only form of communication is emoting through such things. We have not given words new meanings: we have taken their meaning from them. In meaning anything and everything that the speaker feels, the words mean nothing.
Oh, is even this expressed? Am I communicating? It is not the words that fail me. It is I that have failed the words. If one uses a bucket as a hammer or a hoe as a bread-knife, what does one achieve but the breaking of these tools. We have failed to understand the function proper to each word. We have bent them to other uses. No wonder they fail us.
Uh, Oh. Supper Time. ...
Sunday, March 22, 2009
I and Thou - my bed, shower, etc
I have just finished a very confusing, but fascinating assignment on Martin Buber.
And I am planning on treating my bed as an It. I have no desire at all to enter into relation with Bed tonight - you see, I plan to experience the bed, feel the warmth, sense the softness, smell, the freshness. I have absolutely no desire to contemplate the bed, saying "You" to it with all my being while it reciprocates saying "You" to me with all its being. Bed will likely always reside in Thinghood for me. Sorry, Bed.
Now a shower, that's another matter. I could almost say "You" with my whole being as I contemplate a Shower as it is in its being. Perhaps after a long, cold camping trip in the backwoods...
Forget about people right now. I'm too tired to say "You" to them. My 'being' needs to be recharged by experiencing some "It"s through snoozing.
Perhaps more on Buber later - some serious instead of frivolous thoughts.
To all my readers, I say "You" to You! :P
That probably made no sense at all, but that is all right. After all, if You are really a You, there can be no mediation between us...
And I am planning on treating my bed as an It. I have no desire at all to enter into relation with Bed tonight - you see, I plan to experience the bed, feel the warmth, sense the softness, smell, the freshness. I have absolutely no desire to contemplate the bed, saying "You" to it with all my being while it reciprocates saying "You" to me with all its being. Bed will likely always reside in Thinghood for me. Sorry, Bed.
Now a shower, that's another matter. I could almost say "You" with my whole being as I contemplate a Shower as it is in its being. Perhaps after a long, cold camping trip in the backwoods...
Forget about people right now. I'm too tired to say "You" to them. My 'being' needs to be recharged by experiencing some "It"s through snoozing.
Perhaps more on Buber later - some serious instead of frivolous thoughts.
To all my readers, I say "You" to You! :P
That probably made no sense at all, but that is all right. After all, if You are really a You, there can be no mediation between us...
Friday, March 20, 2009
Mind Please Work!
Mind please work!
I need to either write or sleep. I should do both. I feel like a failure because I haven't done either yet. I s'pose I'll just write my paper tomorrow.
My brain just won't set down the facts right now.
So I think I'll go to sleep and just get up at 6am to write. Hmm.
I'm momentarily feeling very, very homesick. But when I return, I know things won't be the same. I'll probably blog on this later when I have time.
Yet, at the same time, I don't want this semester to end. I don't want to leave this community - this learning.
Really, it's me who will have changed when I go home. I don't know if Nova will fit into Sarah's life. She's a different girl. She used to be Sarah, and she cares about much of what Sarah cared about, but she's not the same Sarah she used to be.
I have no idea where the next few years will take me. I have no clue how God will change me. I confess I'm a tad bit frightened - frightened not because I am afraid for my welfare, but because I can't see ahead. But I know that God won't let me go. I haven't the slightest idea of what is to come, but His Name will still be on me nonetheless and He is Truth, even when I can't see it clearly.
Anyway. Order for the evening: Shower, Pray, Sleep.
Goodnight.
I need to either write or sleep. I should do both. I feel like a failure because I haven't done either yet. I s'pose I'll just write my paper tomorrow.
My brain just won't set down the facts right now.
So I think I'll go to sleep and just get up at 6am to write. Hmm.
I'm momentarily feeling very, very homesick. But when I return, I know things won't be the same. I'll probably blog on this later when I have time.
Yet, at the same time, I don't want this semester to end. I don't want to leave this community - this learning.
Really, it's me who will have changed when I go home. I don't know if Nova will fit into Sarah's life. She's a different girl. She used to be Sarah, and she cares about much of what Sarah cared about, but she's not the same Sarah she used to be.
I have no idea where the next few years will take me. I have no clue how God will change me. I confess I'm a tad bit frightened - frightened not because I am afraid for my welfare, but because I can't see ahead. But I know that God won't let me go. I haven't the slightest idea of what is to come, but His Name will still be on me nonetheless and He is Truth, even when I can't see it clearly.
Anyway. Order for the evening: Shower, Pray, Sleep.
Goodnight.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Save me from Mrs. P!: Or, I'm so, so sorry and guiltily ashamed of myself...
I'm upstairs cringing in a corner. Yes, I am, all 18 years of me.
Worse than that, it's not even my own corner I'm hiding in, it's Samantha's room. I'm too scared to hide by myself.
Why, you ask, am I - a college student - shamefacedly hiding in an upstairs room?
Because I didn't do my kitchen chores.
Laugh if you will. I can't help laughing myself, even while I feel a strange mixture of shame, apprehension, and sorrow. I'm so, so, so very sorry, Janice. (Though she can't hear me.)
You see, dear reader, there was to be a meeting of the college faculty this very evening (which is in fact, going on whilst I furtively type). Accordingly, we were asked to tidy things up a tad bit before they all arrived. Our R.A., Janice, had dinner engagements and as things ended up, only Samantha and I were left at the college. Being the lazy, slovenly sloths we are, we tidied up a minimum in the living room and class room, went on a walk, bought two very large luscious brownies from a local baker, came back, cooked brussel sprouts and cabbage and ate pickles, requiring me to open the perpetually smelly downstairs refrigerator which seemed unaccountably stinky tonight, left our dirty dishes in the sink, and headed upstairs to make a halfhearted attempt at homework as faculty cars arrived.
Of course, none of the faculty would walk through the kitchen, I reasoned as I laid down my pickle and cabbage stinking utensils. It would prove a much rued thought in retrospect.
I had barely bestowed myself in my room over various parchments, electronic and otherwise when I heard the door open and several persons enter. Suddenly, I heard a voice that halted my heart and seized it as in a chill ever tightening vise.
"Thomas [name changed]! What is that horrible smell!?!" A high woman's voice rose in what seemed an English strain of disapproval and concerned shock.
"It's cooking, my dear," a heavily British male voice replied calmly.
"Are you sure it's not the drains?!?" Every word carried easily into my room. I could not decipher his response.
It was the Mistress of the Establishment: Mrs. P, herself. Not that she would think of herself that way - she wouldn't - but being herself, she was the unconscious chatelaine of our group of young females to whom the thought of imminent encounter with Mrs. Dr. P would hurl into a frenzy of cleaning, sweeping junk under rugs, tidying, and de-odorizing. Never had I dreamt this day of Her entering the kitchen, our mess exposed to her eyes.
I shivered. I heard her voice beneath me, her steps toward the kitchen. I thought of the cluttered counter, the unwashed pots on the stove, the dishes in the sink. I saw in my minds eye, Janice, innocent, receiving a scolding for a catastrophe she did not create, domestic dirt she had dutifully consigned to our care. I shivered again and shuddered. Suddenly I was overwhelmed by an insurmountable desire for human company - for the commiseration of fellow sinners.
Ever so silently, I crept out of my room and tapped soundlessly on Samantha's door. "Samantha," I whimpered. "Come in," I heard her whisper, and I did. We looked at each other, the horror of realization visible in our faces. "That's S. isn't it," she said. I nodded, wishing with all my might that it were any other lady. "It never crossed my mind that she would come tonight," I offered, whispering, and we continued in soundless interjections of repentence and guilty confession recounting all the multiple things which were out of order on the floor below and which must perforce meet with disapprobation the cultured senses of M' Lady.
"Oh, if she should come up the stairs!" I gasped, and shivered with the horror of the possible event - horrible in it's possibility, possible on account of it's horror. I will not burden you, dear reader, with an account of the current state of the upstairs domain of the women, only suffice it to say that the current state is the past state under the effect of the Thermodynamic Second Law and as no outside force has acted upon it, it has with rapid, unfaltering motion careened in the direction of increasing entropy.
Noises from the kitchen indicated a busy cleaning and tidying. A new horror. And shame. Now we couldn't even sneak down and set all to order while everyone was in the meeting.
"Samantha," I whined, "can I come hide in your room with you?" We had both concluded that neither of us would be leaving the room while the Entity was busy below. She assented, and here have I remained, curled taunt in a corner, typing out the circumstances of my hilarious miserable guiltiness.
********************************************************************
I heard Janice's footsteps on the stair. Furtively, I crept from Samantha's corner and intercepted her near her room. Red of face, I confessed our...urm...situation at which Janice laughed soundlessly, silently shaking from amusement. Relieved, I laughed with her. No, she hadn't expected us to clean up any more, yes, Mrs. P would see a speck of dust anywhere. Still snickering, she padded down the stairs to the meeting.
I felt as if a load had dropped from my shoulders. It had. But I'm still not going to go downstairs until my lady leaves....
Pardon the cowardice. :P
Worse than that, it's not even my own corner I'm hiding in, it's Samantha's room. I'm too scared to hide by myself.
Why, you ask, am I - a college student - shamefacedly hiding in an upstairs room?
Because I didn't do my kitchen chores.
Laugh if you will. I can't help laughing myself, even while I feel a strange mixture of shame, apprehension, and sorrow. I'm so, so, so very sorry, Janice. (Though she can't hear me.)
You see, dear reader, there was to be a meeting of the college faculty this very evening (which is in fact, going on whilst I furtively type). Accordingly, we were asked to tidy things up a tad bit before they all arrived. Our R.A., Janice, had dinner engagements and as things ended up, only Samantha and I were left at the college. Being the lazy, slovenly sloths we are, we tidied up a minimum in the living room and class room, went on a walk, bought two very large luscious brownies from a local baker, came back, cooked brussel sprouts and cabbage and ate pickles, requiring me to open the perpetually smelly downstairs refrigerator which seemed unaccountably stinky tonight, left our dirty dishes in the sink, and headed upstairs to make a halfhearted attempt at homework as faculty cars arrived.
Of course, none of the faculty would walk through the kitchen, I reasoned as I laid down my pickle and cabbage stinking utensils. It would prove a much rued thought in retrospect.
I had barely bestowed myself in my room over various parchments, electronic and otherwise when I heard the door open and several persons enter. Suddenly, I heard a voice that halted my heart and seized it as in a chill ever tightening vise.
"Thomas [name changed]! What is that horrible smell!?!" A high woman's voice rose in what seemed an English strain of disapproval and concerned shock.
"It's cooking, my dear," a heavily British male voice replied calmly.
"Are you sure it's not the drains?!?" Every word carried easily into my room. I could not decipher his response.
It was the Mistress of the Establishment: Mrs. P, herself. Not that she would think of herself that way - she wouldn't - but being herself, she was the unconscious chatelaine of our group of young females to whom the thought of imminent encounter with Mrs. Dr. P would hurl into a frenzy of cleaning, sweeping junk under rugs, tidying, and de-odorizing. Never had I dreamt this day of Her entering the kitchen, our mess exposed to her eyes.
I shivered. I heard her voice beneath me, her steps toward the kitchen. I thought of the cluttered counter, the unwashed pots on the stove, the dishes in the sink. I saw in my minds eye, Janice, innocent, receiving a scolding for a catastrophe she did not create, domestic dirt she had dutifully consigned to our care. I shivered again and shuddered. Suddenly I was overwhelmed by an insurmountable desire for human company - for the commiseration of fellow sinners.
Ever so silently, I crept out of my room and tapped soundlessly on Samantha's door. "Samantha," I whimpered. "Come in," I heard her whisper, and I did. We looked at each other, the horror of realization visible in our faces. "That's S. isn't it," she said. I nodded, wishing with all my might that it were any other lady. "It never crossed my mind that she would come tonight," I offered, whispering, and we continued in soundless interjections of repentence and guilty confession recounting all the multiple things which were out of order on the floor below and which must perforce meet with disapprobation the cultured senses of M' Lady.
"Oh, if she should come up the stairs!" I gasped, and shivered with the horror of the possible event - horrible in it's possibility, possible on account of it's horror. I will not burden you, dear reader, with an account of the current state of the upstairs domain of the women, only suffice it to say that the current state is the past state under the effect of the Thermodynamic Second Law and as no outside force has acted upon it, it has with rapid, unfaltering motion careened in the direction of increasing entropy.
Noises from the kitchen indicated a busy cleaning and tidying. A new horror. And shame. Now we couldn't even sneak down and set all to order while everyone was in the meeting.
"Samantha," I whined, "can I come hide in your room with you?" We had both concluded that neither of us would be leaving the room while the Entity was busy below. She assented, and here have I remained, curled taunt in a corner, typing out the circumstances of my hilarious miserable guiltiness.
********************************************************************
I heard Janice's footsteps on the stair. Furtively, I crept from Samantha's corner and intercepted her near her room. Red of face, I confessed our...urm...situation at which Janice laughed soundlessly, silently shaking from amusement. Relieved, I laughed with her. No, she hadn't expected us to clean up any more, yes, Mrs. P would see a speck of dust anywhere. Still snickering, she padded down the stairs to the meeting.
I felt as if a load had dropped from my shoulders. It had. But I'm still not going to go downstairs until my lady leaves....
Pardon the cowardice. :P
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Transfigurific, Transfiguralicious, Transfigurational
It's Done!
The Art Term Paper is finished. It's been creamed.
I enjoyed writing it. I learned a lot and I was amazed to actually see beautiful themes emerging from individual paintings once I actually spent extended periods of time examining them.
The 'extended periods of time' was the grueling part. I don't want to have to pull the stay-awake-till-5am thing again. Once was enough. It provoked the strangest, most uncomfortable subconscious searching slumber I have ever experienced, too.
I'm really rather proud of this paper. I don't know how well my prof will like it seeing as how I was not able to find direct commentary sources on the paintings. But I did my best and I think my interpretations are accurate.
Alliteration, pun, nuance, and word innovation came quite readily to me while writing this one - don't ask me why.
"Transfigurational"
"pure white" - when commenting on color meaning.
"robe red and richly..."
"lends to Perugino's painting a Paraclete-centered-ness"
My R.A.s and were discussing at some point exactly how to turn Transfiguration into an Adjective. We stuck with the above, though Transfiguralicious and Transfigurific were considered.
I guess it was the banana bread I snacked on all night.
The Art Term Paper is finished. It's been creamed.
I enjoyed writing it. I learned a lot and I was amazed to actually see beautiful themes emerging from individual paintings once I actually spent extended periods of time examining them.
The 'extended periods of time' was the grueling part. I don't want to have to pull the stay-awake-till-5am thing again. Once was enough. It provoked the strangest, most uncomfortable subconscious searching slumber I have ever experienced, too.
I'm really rather proud of this paper. I don't know how well my prof will like it seeing as how I was not able to find direct commentary sources on the paintings. But I did my best and I think my interpretations are accurate.
Alliteration, pun, nuance, and word innovation came quite readily to me while writing this one - don't ask me why.
"Transfigurational"
"pure white" - when commenting on color meaning.
"robe red and richly..."
"lends to Perugino's painting a Paraclete-centered-ness"
My R.A.s and were discussing at some point exactly how to turn Transfiguration into an Adjective. We stuck with the above, though Transfiguralicious and Transfigurific were considered.
I guess it was the banana bread I snacked on all night.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Who Said It? Or: In What Does Personhood Consist?
"Beings whose existence depends not on our will but on nature's, have nevertheless, if they are irrational beings, only a relative value as means, and are therefore called things; rational beings on the contrary are called persons, because their very nature points them out as ends in themselves, that is as something which must not be used merely as means, and so far therefore restricts freedom of action (and is an object of respect). "
Who penned these words? Guess, if you can. A modern Harvard professor of ethics? An advocate of abortion and euthanasia? A forward thinking philosopher seeking to distribute the right to life based on sentience?
None of the above. If you can believe it, this incredible sentence came from an 18th century Christian philosopher whose ideas would affect all moral thought which followed him.
Meet Immanuel Kant.
Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals
Now I realize that what Kant herein stated may have meant something radically different to the author than how it struck me. The philosopher was probably simply referring to the traditional distinction between man and beasts on the basis of "a reasonable soul" or some such faculty. However, in light of current ethical philosophy, it is perturbing to consider this statement.
Who penned these words? Guess, if you can. A modern Harvard professor of ethics? An advocate of abortion and euthanasia? A forward thinking philosopher seeking to distribute the right to life based on sentience?
None of the above. If you can believe it, this incredible sentence came from an 18th century Christian philosopher whose ideas would affect all moral thought which followed him.
Meet Immanuel Kant.
Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals
Now I realize that what Kant herein stated may have meant something radically different to the author than how it struck me. The philosopher was probably simply referring to the traditional distinction between man and beasts on the basis of "a reasonable soul" or some such faculty. However, in light of current ethical philosophy, it is perturbing to consider this statement.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
How many male students does it take to change Professor Bloedow's tire?
Setting up the scenario:
Frigid temperatures
Steeply inclined street
Old, beat up car
Flat tire
Senior professor
Four strong male students
One hour (during Greek Class)
Goal: Tire Change
I'm hearing this second hand, but I wish I could have seen it myself and taken some pictures. Apparently, the little jack kept slipping - dropping the car onto the boys. The brakes worked on the front tires - unfortunately, the flat tire was on the front. It took all four of them to lift the car to reinstate the jack, hold the car from rolling down the slope, and change the tire without the car falling again. And also, a whole hour in the freezing cold.
Like I said, someone should have snapped some photos.
Frigid temperatures
Steeply inclined street
Old, beat up car
Flat tire
Senior professor
Four strong male students
One hour (during Greek Class)
Goal: Tire Change
I'm hearing this second hand, but I wish I could have seen it myself and taken some pictures. Apparently, the little jack kept slipping - dropping the car onto the boys. The brakes worked on the front tires - unfortunately, the flat tire was on the front. It took all four of them to lift the car to reinstate the jack, hold the car from rolling down the slope, and change the tire without the car falling again. And also, a whole hour in the freezing cold.
Like I said, someone should have snapped some photos.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Two Down; One, Two, Three, Four to go!
My Philosophy term paper and my Music term paper are complete! God has done great things for me!
Now I have a Music midterm exam on Wednesday, an Art term paper due the 17th, a Scripture term paper due less than a week thereafter, a Science term paper due within this month, and a Literature term paper due by the end of term. Augh!
Basically, I first need to find some commentary on a couple paintings of the Trinity, and I'll be ready (more or less) to go for the Art Paper. The Scripture paper should take no more than a Friday and a Saturday. The Science paper will likely form itself into a creative letter to the professor, just being my blunt self. And for the Literature paper, I'm thinking of examining the likeness between Lilith in George MacDonald's Lilith and Orual in C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces. Both headstrong, stubborn to their own harm, females needing to be shaken up a bit...Hmmm. I wonder why I like that notion?
I had better go to sleep now. After all, I Kant write four papers post - Hume - ously...
(Please, someone, get the joke.)
Now I have a Music midterm exam on Wednesday, an Art term paper due the 17th, a Scripture term paper due less than a week thereafter, a Science term paper due within this month, and a Literature term paper due by the end of term. Augh!
Basically, I first need to find some commentary on a couple paintings of the Trinity, and I'll be ready (more or less) to go for the Art Paper. The Scripture paper should take no more than a Friday and a Saturday. The Science paper will likely form itself into a creative letter to the professor, just being my blunt self. And for the Literature paper, I'm thinking of examining the likeness between Lilith in George MacDonald's Lilith and Orual in C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces. Both headstrong, stubborn to their own harm, females needing to be shaken up a bit...Hmmm. I wonder why I like that notion?
I had better go to sleep now. After all, I Kant write four papers post - Hume - ously...
(Please, someone, get the joke.)
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