January Monday: old faithfuls

Beginnings.

They happen all of the time. Every morning, you sit up and yawn and brush away the dark, and another 24 hours curve out in front of you all shiny with the sunrise and silver with dew and heavy with dreams and pressing with things to do. Every Saturday night, you lay down your work and prepare to meet God in the company of His saints, where you are re-enabled to love and serve Him another week. Every Monday, you take up your cross of labor and assignments and teachers and bills and traffic and boss and co-worker and family responsibilities. Every Christmas you rejoice anew at the gift of God in our form that happened to renew us into His form. Every Easter you are reminded of the grime that was stripped from your soul by that One Sacrifice, and every time you confess your sins you feel the lightness again and can stand up and go out with a fresh slate. Every January 1st we pledge to do or not do something great or ambitious, something that will change us into better people, and whether we stick with it throughout the next 365 days or not, we start feeling like we can do anything. Like we are new people.

It is January, the first month of the year. And it is a Monday, the fresh start to the week, even if it is the hardest day to get out of bed. But today is the second Monday of the year. And today I am grateful for the things that are the same about my life as they were a while ago. I am, of course, thankful for many things that are new and different about this year, and am also hoping to see change and wisdom and joy grow in me and around me. But there are so many things that are good, solid, glad, reliable, proven, peaceful, funny, comforting about my life both today and days gone by.

Thanksgiving #245-253

-Good Earth Original tea, no matter how tired I think I am of cinnamon and similar spices, still tastes good.

-my dad will never stop taking care of me like I am his little girl.

-my awesome grandparents at Christmas: Grandpa talks to everyone and has the best dry sense of humor around, but he doesn't get emotional or huggy very often. Grandma bestows hugs and thank-yous and all of the presents to so many people, but you can also look across and see she is just looking at you... without saying anything... for a very long time... and not ever meaning to say or do anything at all... just admiring something about you probably. And if it were anyone but her that would be a little awkward.

-after a month away, all the roommates will congregate back here, still the same people with the same strengths and personalities, no matter what has changed in their lives.

-George Herbert. Can I just say, his poetry will never cease to be amazing? I can always find something that says just what I want to say to God.

-coming back to a job and having people be happy to see me, having my work waiting for me like a faithful puppy.

-no matter how empty my fridge is, I can still go into the grocery store and find exactly everything I need right there on those shelves, and when I give the cashier the right amount of papers and coins, she lets me take it all home and put it comfortably onto those refrigerator shelves.

-O Brother Where Art Thou makes my whole self happy. Homer was awesome, the Coens are talented, the music is perfect, George Clooney is ridiculously good-looking even in middle age, and having sisters who like to compare book and movie just make it better.

-the Christmas lights are still up around my windows. I think they should stay there indefinitely.

Everywhere I Went That Spring, I Was Alone

From Poetry Daily today.


Paula Bohince
Everywhere I Went That Spring, I Was Alone

In the single room of a bathtub, humming "Love
Me Tender" to hear a sullen human
voice. Then after,

fainting in slow motion to the tile. Succumbing
to steam and waking, on my
own, drowsy as a rose.

Mailing a letter and waiting, empty, beside a hornet's
thumb-small home, fit inside the lip
of the mailbox. The hornet

each day startled less by the sudden thunder
of the falling drawbridge, the cymbal
of sunshine let in.

In the kitchen, beside the toaster, crying unabashedly
into dishtowels as I timed my meal
and kept company the cool

block of butter in its iridescent silver, the blunt
knife, the beveled glass that carried
my milk. Alone

when it began to hail one afternoon. A miracle
suspending the cottage in darkness. Alone
taking a photograph

of the glory and alone when the pearly
melt returned the grass to ordinary June. Everywhere
those months my nose buzzed

from crying. Quivered so unlike the hornet, pitiless
in her work. Bleeding intermittently
into my dress hem, how beautiful I became

then, ringed by brown flowers. More
hornet than my hornet friend, alone in her own
collapsing universe.

Happy New Year

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
2 Corinthians 5:17

a novel

I've been reading Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina for a while now (you must pardon me; it's nearly 990 pages long and I've been reading other things too), and as I read I am impressed with his art and perception. The story is tragic, follows more than one adultery, plagued with depression and hatred, but Tolstoy shows these characters as real and complex, their stories in motion and with conseqeuences, and their falls and stumblings for what they are and for how they destroy life.

Not only that, but it is full of striking metaphors and some realizations and generalizations that are really great. Take this paragraph about Levin (the character I probably like and sympathize with the most) in Chapter Fourteen:

"Levin had been married three months. He was happy but not at all in the same way as he had expected. At every step he found himself disillusioned in his former dreams while also discovering new, unexpected enchantments. Levin was happy, but on entering into family life he saw at every step that it was not at all what he had imagined. At every step he felt as a man might feel who, after admiring the smooth, cheerful motion of a boat on the water, actually gets into the boat himself. He saw that apart from having to sit steadily in the boar without rocking, he also had to keep in mind, without forgetting for a moment where he was going, that there was water beneath his feet, that he had to row, that his unaccustomed hands hurt, and that it was easy only when you looked at it, but that doing it, though it made you very happy, was very hard."

It's a Wonderful Life

George Bailey: What is it you want, Mary? What do you want? You want the moon? Just say the word and I'll throw a lasso around it and pull it down. Hey. That's a pretty good idea. I'll give you the moon, Mary.
Mary: I'll take it. Then what?
George: Well, then you can swallow it, and it'll all dissolve, see... and the moonbeams would shoot out of your fingers and your toes and the ends of your hair... am I talking too much?

Man on Porch: Why don't you kiss her instead of talking her to death?
George: You want me to kiss her, huh?
Man on Porch: Ah, youth is wasted on the wrong people.

George: This is a very interesting situation!
Mary: Please give me my robe.
George: A man doesn't get in a situation like this every day.
Mary: I'd like to have my robe.
George: Not in Bedford Falls anyway.

George: Mary Hatch, why in the world did you ever marry a guy like me?
Mary: To keep from being an old maid!
George: You could have married Sam Wainright, or anybody else in town...
Mary: I didn't want to marry anybody else in town. I want my baby to look like you.
George: You didn't even have a honeymoon. I promised you...
[stops]
George: Your what?
Mary: My baby!
George: [stuttering] Your, your, your, ba- Mary, you on the nest?
Mary: George Bailey Lassos Stork!

Senior Angel: A man down on earth needs our help.
Clarence: Splendid. Is he sick?
Senior Angel: No, worse. He's discouraged.


George: Well, you look about the kind of angel I'd get.

George: Now, come on, get your clothes on, and we'll stroll up to my car and get... Oh, I'm sorry. I'll stroll. You fly.
Clarence: I can't fly! I haven't got my wings.
George: You haven't got your wings. Yeah, that's right.

Clarence: Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?

Now Beginning

Gerard Manely Hopkins has a short Christmas poem I love.

Moonless darkness stands between.
Past, the Past, no more be seen!
But the Bethlehem-star may lead me
To the sight of Him Who freed me
From the self that I have been.
Make me pure, Lord: Thou art holy;
Make me meek, Lord: Thou wert lowly;
Now beginning, and alway:
Now begin, on Christmas day.