Why, when you go to comment on someone's blog, are you always asked to "choose an identity"? Does this mean that Blogger is existentialist?

The Tale of a Whiteboard

I love whiteboards. There is something about a blank whiteboard that entices, even demands, to be written upon. Apparently, however, they don't have that effect on everyone; the other members of my family think my whiteboard obsession is eccentric at best.

Last month, you see, my parents purchased a magnetic whiteboard for the refrigerator door, with the admirable goal of having one, very visible place for grocery lists and notes to other family members. When this useful object had been installed and duly admired, it sat there for nearly a day entirely blank. This, I saw, would not do; so, in deference to its official status as bearer of household messages, I wrote across the top: "It is hereby decreed . . ."

Within the next few days, a Walmart list slowly grew beneath my writing. My sister, who disapproved of my whiteboard writing from the beginning, pointed out that the phrase "It is hereby decreed" made no logical or grammatical sense when followed by a Walmart list. I therefore modified it so it read, "It is hereby decreed that any member of this household who shall make pilgrimage to Walmart shall not return from hence without bringing these relics:"

In due time, the Walmart list and its preface were erased and the board was again blank. Its unrelieved whiteness made me think of Robert Frost's Desert Places, so I copied the last stanza unto it:

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars - on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

Since then, I have been writing a different poem on the whiteboard every week or so, to the general amusement of my family (except for the one time when I wrote a note instead, telling people not to eat the bananas I wanted to use for baking, worded thusly: "Behold the sacred bananas. Let none touch them, for in three days they shall be suitable for banana muffins.").

At present, I have an Emily Dickinson poem up:

I lost a world - the other day!
Has anybody found?
You'll know it by the row of stars
Across its forehead bound.

A rich man might not notice it.
But to my frugal eye -
Of more esteem than ducats.
Oh find it - Sir - for me!

This one has not been generally popular, but I like it. When you walk past the same poem every day, different interpretations and shades of meaning pop out at you each time, depending on what mood you're in. When I first copied this poem unto the board, it seemed jaunty and light-hearted, Emily in a silly mood. But the tragic undertones gradually became more obvious - the loss of dreams and illusions and all the little worlds we humans construct for ourselves. At first I thought "Sir" in the last line was an address to the reader, but then I remembered that Dickinson sometimes refers to God as "Sir." In that light, the last line becomes a desperate prayer or even an accusation of divine indifference.

I wonder why I didn't think of this method of studying a poem when I was in school.

Broken

"This is my body, broken for you."

I stared at the tiny, perfectly square piece of bread in my hand. The exuberant jeans-clad youth pastor leading the service went on about unity and urged us to join hands with those around us and pray together over the bread and wine. I couldn't think of anything I less wanted to do at that moment.

It was the week after my previously-described visit to St. John's Anglican Catholic Church, I was visiting another new church, The Community Church of West Bend (yes, that was its complete name; I don't know what I was thinking). So far, several praise choruses, among the more inane examples of the genre, had been sung with no more enthusiasm than they deserved, and the congregation had been treated to zippy video clips and mini-motivational speeches from the worship leader. An advent wreath had been lit, but, after telling us what a powerful symbol the wreath was, the aforementioned youth pastor had gone on to say that the candles symbolized : whatever one wished them to. As the only woman in the large auditorium wearing a skirt, and certainly the only one wearing a lace cap atop her head, I felt exceedingly out-of-place. Not that anyone looked at me strangely; indeed, no one looked at me at all. I was alone.

"This is my body, broken for you."

I have never been able to believe, despite my firm Protestantism, that there isn't something magical in those words: all the hope and mystery in the world compressed into nine syllables. That day, however, my repetition of the words in my mind became a taunt. As I shifted the bread from finger to finger to prevent its getting sticky, and glanced warily at my fellow worshippers, I began to feel that the Church of God was reduced to a collection of places like these: sincere in their desire to worship God, but having no connection to one another or to those who have gone before. Despite the joining of hands, we were all eating alone.

"This is my body, broken for you."

The words took on a double meaning that hadn't occurred to me before. I knew, of course, that the church, as well as the bread, is His body. But I had never applied the second part to the church. The death of Christ was the breaking of what ought to be one, yet that brokenness resulted in redemption. Christ prayed that the church might be one as He and His Father were one; yet he knew that, a few hours later, the Father would have to turn His face away from the Son. If the church, which is His body, is also broken, how will that further our redemption? I don't quite understand it; but we are His Body, and we are broken. And we believe that this brokenness, even if it was caused by man's sin, will result in God's glory.

But that still doesn't help me find a church, does it?

Melting

To judge by appearances alone, a Wisconsin March is drearier even than November. The temperature today hit 50 for the first time since . . . well, it's been a while. As a result, the snowbanks, which have been slowly growing until they are in some places up to my chest, are all melting at once, covering the world with a mess of mud and slush. Nothing has budded yet, so my window provides a charming view of bare trees, dead fields, and the grey-brown remains of snow. The sky, heavy with rain, is a similar dingy color, and a cold mist completes the effect. And yet there is an enormous emotional difference, if not much of an aesthetic one, between a world that is waiting to die and one that is trying to be born. The ability to walk outside without gloves or scarf, and feel the mist on your skin, is irrationally exciting. The muddy slush splashing up on your pants leg is beautiful in its wetness. All day I have been humming Beach Boys' songs (having momentarily forgotten, in my exuberance, that I hate the Beach Boys), and the dingy gray sky has been humming along with me.

"For if we have been united together in the likeness of his death, we certainly also shall be in the likeness of his resurrection."

In Praise of the Male Species

It occurs to me that I have, in the past, been far too harsh on the subject of teenaged boys. For it is only when one is stranded, in the midst of a snowstorm, on an ice-coated hill one had no business parking on in the first place, and one's father is 60 miles away at a conference, that the virtues of the young male become evident to one.

From just such an unfortunate predicament I was rescued, yesterday evening, by Matt and Zach, whom I barely know, but whose parents know mine from church. Their arrival, with four-wheel drive vehicle, chains, and knowing looks at the afflicted vehicle, was as the coming of the spring rains upon the earth. Far from being exasperated at having to drive through a snowstorm to rescue a young female from the error of her ways, which one might think the natural response, they seemed rather delighted at the opportunity to demonstrate their car-removal skills. For a challenge involving hauling a large, heavy object out of an improbable place is precisely the sort of thing, it seems, that the young male enjoys. I stood helplessly out of the way and in ten minutes the car was unstuck, whereupon I, calling out my thanks, hurried to drive it out of the way of traffic. Matt and Zach were still behind me a couple miles later when I made the mistake of stopping a stop sign which happened to be at the top of a steep hill, and the car once again wouldn't move. One of them (Zach, I think) hopped out of their car and offered to help. I yielding the driver's seat to obviously more capable hands, he backed the car to the bottom of the hill and rammed the gas so that the car's momentum carried it up the slippery hill, and right through the stop sign. As I could not dispute the reasonableness of this course of action, under the circumstances, I resumed the driver's seat with further thanks and drove very, very carefully the rest of the way home. The sight of their headlights in my rearview mirror was quite comforting, until they turned off on another road.

I think I shall bake them some chocolate chip cookies.