This Keeps Happening

Do people purposefully go to a public place and discuss private problems, as if being in public will keep things quiet, calm, from exploding? Or are they not meaning to tiff, but happen to bring their troubles wherever they go, and just happen to be where I am - I, unfortunately noticing the tenseness in their demeanors as I walk by from the counter to my table, as I wait for my coffee, as I sit and read in the corner half a room away from them?

(A rather poorly-written poem without a title, which should be revised before long)

You can see from across the coffee shop

there is link between these two people,

but broken, or at least rusting, grating,

people so beautiful, so once-right,

so pretending to be right still.

-

Your headphones fill your ears but your eyes

see the words unspoken as her glance

flits to his and back away, so quickly,

her mouth shaping phrases short, hesitant.

-

You’re not eavesdropping. You wouldn’t want to

hear the sounds of those sharper hand motions,

his eyebrows lowering, her attention

on her food for a long five minutes.

-

You see them turn and twist their cups,

their voices, on either side of the table, unsure

if their link will hold, or if it, too, will crack,

and spill something all over their world

in a mess that won’t be easy to wipe up.

Someday: London

I maintain that The Pond is too big. It's gonna be a while before I can get there.

I love this poster - fog, fantastic phone booths, the little coffee spot, Big Ben. This would look nice with the black and white Paris poster I already want.

And apparently it's easy to look smashing in London, even in a downpour. Note to self: Be demure. Wear heels. Buy an umbrella.

someday, over the rainbow: Paris

Someday, I shall travel.

But someday a little closer, I shall buy posters.

...sigh...

Relational (with pictures)

[Post-posting note: I have no idea where the underlining came from. It's some technological prank played on me because I have no underline option in my text and this just happened when I added pictures.]

Last week, I had the privilege of being surrounded by my people.

Being at my parents' house means being continually with some other person, and usually at least a dozen others. It means lots of planning ahead to do anything. It means relaxing moments by the stove being constantly interrupted, waiting to sleep until 8 sisters are also ready to quit talking for the night, not being able to just take a shower when you wake up (you're likely to reach the bathroom just after someone else finished off the hot water).

Being in relation with people means living in love, a love that isn't one-dimensional or one-directional. Being in relation means having the opportunity both to be completely drained in doing for others and to be filled with a kind of new energy in return. It means seeing others as integral parts of our individual lives; seeing ourselves in those surrounding us, and doing unto others; seeing God in ourselves and bestowing grace in imitation of Him, and seeing Him in others when they are in need of a glass of cold water; seeing God as the author of life's story and loving His plan as it unfolds, and the other characters on these pages.

Part of my break, I was more dead than alive. I went home sick, worn out from the previous weeks. I didn't live as well in my community as I should have, and was rather like a dead battery needing to be jumped, which sucks away the life of other helping batteries.

But my family was faithful. These people, this God, gave. Life, love, beer, rest, sunshine, snow, pancakes, ice cream, good night hugs, words, gentle correction, long laughter, slobbery kisses, joy.

My days were well spent. And toward the end of the week I was more aware of the grace that has been given, that is to be lived, in every interaction:

shopping with big sister, eating lunch with sis-in-law and watching her discipline her son as I held her baby, meeting a newborn cousin, sharing a bed with a sister, explaining my classes to Dad, taking a 2-yr-old niece to the bathroom countless times, finding socks for little brothers in the laundry room, cooking new things with Becki and Laura, coffee in the morning with Mom, reading stories, wrapping presents, giving a baby a bottle, getting a backrub, singing before supper, helping host a party.

We are made to be relational. Our God is Trinitarian, and we are made in His image. This means that we are most honoring to Him, most ourselves, most alive, when we are giving and receiving in community with God and man.

"Not one human being ought, even were it possible, to be enough for himself. Each of us needs God and every human soul He has made." (George MacDonald)

Lent: Spring, salvation

You should really read this post by Pr. Sumpter.

http://havingtwolegs.blogspot.com/2011/03/gospel-of-lent.html

Oh, here is a snippet from the middle of the message, to pique your interest:

"Whether it takes another few hundred years or thirty-thousand more years, the history of this planet will be the story of salvation, the victory of grace, and the vast majority of humanity will be saved. Hell will be a small, dark speck populated with a tiny band of gollums making love to their darkness.

In other words, the story of history is an enormous Springtime. It is the story of Lent, the story of days getting longer, the world getting lighter."

venison on the hook

My grandpa and uncles were (and my brothers became) serious hunters, going out for 10 days at a time, horseback with pack mules, coming back thinner, with nearly-empty packs but enough dirt, facial hair and usually some bear or elk to prove themselves mountain men. The men in the family all enjoyed target-shooting, and usually brought in some kind of fresh game sometime during the year.

Yet Poetry Daily's listing today caught my eye, about a fellow who

"never—it was a point of honor—
Hunted legally—not antelope
Nor deer nor elk. He never had a fishing
License either, for that matter, never." (http://poems.com/poem.php?date=15050)

Here at home, getting some wild meat didn't really necessitate having all the paperwork and plans. Mostly because 'getting a deer' here meant something a little different. It seemed we couldn't keep any kind of critter out of the garden, and it was understood by everyone that it's ok to protect your own property. Plus deer taste really good.

So when I was little we usually got venison every summer or fall, eating fresh butterfly steaks and cutting up the rest to store in the freezer for later in the year. Dad may not have had a license all of the years of my growing up, but we didn't consider it poaching. The deer was usually caught up to his knees in bean bushes, or with sweet carrot tops hanging from his mouth, and we always made use of the meat.

But this getting of meat during hunting season without a license, or perhaps a couple of weeks outside of season, was something I knew was not quite considered kosher by 'the cops' (considered governmental authority to us kids). It was one of those things you know is all right, but that you don't want the world seeing because they might not agree with you and cause trouble somehow. Like the fact that my mom taught us at home, or like 4 of us sharing seatbelts before we got a rig big enough for all of us. There was no sin, but there was something like fear, especially to a kid who just knew that there was a reason to keep something quiet from authorities.

The meat gathered in our garden usually hung upside down from large metal hooks in the cellar for a few days, and the door bumped into it when you went to fetch some canned good from a back shelf. In the dark, the thump of wood on flesh (or, if the door happened to miss it and you stepped in quickly, your hand against a cold, hairless carcass) set your heart thumping just as hard, and fed the imagination. What if someone saw what we did every day? What if there were spies? Would they believe us? Would they even realize it was just a deer?

Still Praising (Tuesday of finals week)

For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was but a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. His song in the Tower had been of defiance rather than hope; for then he was thinking of himself. Now, for a moment, his own fate, and even his master’s, ceased to trouble him. (From The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien)

Sometimes I feel this way during finals week. Most of the classes here have an oral and a written component, and oftentimes it seems that the week will never end and fade off into the past so we can glide off into Spring Break. For at least a week now, life has been full to overflowing with finishing assignments, paper writing, memorizing from Tolkien and the Greek New Testament and a collection of Romantic poetry, filling out endless study sheets, gathering over coffee and sweet things to study with others, flipping through underlined pages to refresh on what the heck Kant actually thought about Hume, etc etc.

But life is definitely more than this, and there is goodness beyond the reach of whatever distress or disappointment is staring us in the face. There are great glories and there are simple ones.

-We can sub-create things. In fact we are supposed to: we are sub-creators because we are human. We are supposed to write poems, and knead bread dough, and stir oil paints, to devise faster more beautiful cars and pianos and plays, to make music, and gardens, and children.

-Snow. When you least expect it, it is the most spectacular. When it coordinates with sunshine, it is fairy.

-The 5 year old daughter of my host family came into my room earlier. "Do you cough the most? Are you the sickest?" she asked me. "Do you eat cough drops?" Then I realized she had a box of kleenex and a bag of cough drops in her hand. "They are apple kind. Do you want one?"

-I love knowing (not just words but whole verses of) Scripture in Greek. I love the thick sound of the words, how involved your mouth has to be at producing those sounds, how we can 'speak God's words after Him' by speaking the words of Christ in the Gospel account.

-Honey roasted peanuts.

-Looking forward to a sister and brother coming to town this weekend.

-Knowing that when I do my best in faith, God is contented with where I am. He does not berate me like I do myself. He does not review my failings. They are crucified with Christ and no longer live.

Grateful Anyway, Sunday edition

I've been kneeling on the carpeted floor by a stack of books on the Romantic Era and a stack of handwritten notes and study guides almost as tall, going through a final exam review sheet, pretty much since dinner. So tired. Still coughing after almost 2 weeks. Not really sure how the next 5 days will be. But knowing I should be grateful.

-My family came to town today, stayed 4 hours, and drove back home - Five hours of driving to see us! They are sweet.

-Grandma Smiley sent my birthday present with them. I love this sweater!

-Brownies. The kind made with several kinds of chocolate and so much butter that Julia Child would definitely approve.

-Tea with honey and cream

-Teachers who say things like, "I'm pretty much free all day tomorrow if you want to meet and talk about translation or anything you're having trouble with." Or, "Memorize 4 passages from Tolkien and incorporate them into your presentation." Awesome.

-Naps in the Big Chair under a fleece blanket.

-Coldplay (E.g., Til Kingdom Come: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo49REpQCwA)

-Kleenex

His Hands Have Learned What Cannot Be Taught

This poem by Martin Espada was featured on Poetry Daily today.

What do you think about taking an emotionally-charged situation and stating it quietly, matter-of-factly, like this?

Do his simple lines minimize the sadness of this truth in their lives - the woman's recurring siezures - or do they

help us understand this kind of grief?

His Hands Have Learned What Cannot Be Taught

My wife has had another seizure,
the kind where she seems to be dead,
her eyes open and unseeing,
like jellyfish dangling
in the ocean at midnight.

My son, not yet seventeen,
leans across the table
and shuts her eyelids
with the V of his fingers.

When she wakes,
she will not know why she dropped her coffee.
She will not know his name, or mine, at first.
She will not know that he closed her eyes.
I will know that his hands have learned
what cannot be taught, that now
I can leave the table.

Shakespeare and Huck Finn

Collaborating with The Erratic Muse (http://theerraticmuse.blogspot.com/) for Shakespeare celebrations, and studying Mark Twain in class this week, I take this opportunity to quote them both. Oh, Mark Twain, you crack me up.

"To Be or Not To Be" (from Shakespeare's Hamlet 3/1)

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.--Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.

"To Be or Not To Be." (from Twain's Huckleberry Finn, Ch 21)

   "To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin
  That makes calamity of so long life;
  For who would fardels bear, till Birnam Wood do
    come to Dunsinane,
  But that the fear of something after death
  Murders the innocent sleep,
  Great nature's second course,
  And makes us rather sling the arrows of outrageous fortune
  Than fly to others that we know not of.
  There's the respect must give us pause:
  Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst;
  For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
  The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
  The law's delay, and the quietus which his
    pangs might take,
  In the dead waste and middle of the night,
    when churchyards yawn
  In customary suits of solemn black,
  But that the undiscovered country from whose
    bourne no traveler returns,
  Breathes forth contagion on the world,
  And thus the native hue of resolution, like
    the poor cat i' the adage,
  Is sicklied o'er with care,
  And all the clouds that lowered o'er our housetops,
  With this regard their currents turn awry,
  And lose the name of action.
  'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.
    But soft you, the fair Ophelia:
  Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws,
  But get thee to a nunnery -- go!"