Daughter of Shalott

2007-07-18T10:58:00.000-05:00

I have just returned from Timothy and Abbie's wedding. There was feasting and there was dancing, and there was a great deal of happy confusion and a few not-so-happy arguments in getting everything ready. And in the end they were well and truly married, before God and half the inhabitants of Rockland, Maine. Thanks be to God, who alone does marvelous things.

A fuller description of our trip may be forthcoming later, if I'm in the mood. But now I have to go look for another job, so I can pay my school bills in the fall. Sigh . . .

2007-06-23T17:06:00.001-05:00

I went hiking with my sister and her two dogs today, under a lazy blue sky, a sky with no particular commitments. Some summer skies are serious, at least, about their blueness; this one was sort of a pale hazy blue, sprinkled with clouds which trickled away at their edges rather than definitely ending.

We debated whether to go up to the marsh (no shade), or to the Kettle Moraine forest (too far a drive), or a nearby park where you can swim in the Rock River (no place to walk, and the younger dog has just been spayed and can't get her stitches wet). We finally settled on Pike Lake, where we could both hike and let the older dog swim (though it would be horribly crowded on a Saturday, as indeed it was). The beach and picnic areas were swarming with people talking boisterously in Spanish and English, grilling, playing volleyball, dancing to music played on scratchy boomboxes, and most of all eating. But the trails were not nearly so crowded, and anyway the congestion gave us a chance to practice such important dog skills as Continuing to Walk Nicely Even Though There Are People Over There, and Calmly Greeting Overly Rambunctious Fellow Dogs.

On the way home, we stopped to get a raspberry shake for the people and an ice cream cone for the dogs. (Ice cream is, for some reason, the only exception to my sister's rule against sharing people food with dogs. Yuck!)

2007-06-22T21:56:00.000-05:00

3 weeks until the wedding. (Or 15 more packing days until we leave, as my mother informed me this morning.)

I actually enjoyed giving a wedding shower, by the way. Hosting a party has distinct advantages over attending one, for the introvert: as long as I have something useful to do, I never feel awkward. The bride and groom flew in for the weekend and were unbelievably cute. We played only one game, in which only the guests of honor had to answer the questions, and the rest of the guests got to laugh at their attempts to guess each other's answers. The chicken salad wilted, and the aunt who was bringing the decorations didn't arrive until half an hour before the party was to begin, but what fun would a party be without some minor crises to overcome?

I'm sure that all crises attending the wedding itself will also be resolved in the nick of time, as is common practice. I'm just glad I'm not the one who has to deal with them. All I have to do is fuss about helpfully during the last few days, smile delightedly at everything, and appear in due bridesmaid attire at the appropriate time (having returned the previously selected shoes and bought the new ones the bride has now decided upon).

The Joys of Soup

2007-06-04T14:47:00.000-05:00

It is a damp, drizzly day, and I am making soup. The making of soup not only provides consolation for the weather's inhospitability, it almost makes one glad of it. Therefore, I shall devote this post to the glories of that useful food.

The great thing about soup is that one can make it out of anything. Well, anything edible, anyway. One can dump in yesterday's leftover casserole, a bunch of bones that have too little meat on them to be good for anything else, and the dried-out rice from last week's takeout Chinese, and somehow it still ends up tasting good. One can even make an entirely different soup out of leftover soup. Soup-making is very creative. You can experiment with mixing flavors in different ways, and if your first attempt fails, you just pour in some more water and keep adding flavors until you get it right.

In our house, we have refined this process to its ultimate extreme: The Never-Ending Soup Pot. You start with a good basic soup, like potato or tomato-vegetable. Whatever's left over from the first time you serve it, you use as a base for the next night's soup; then you use the leftovers from that as a base for the next, and so on. The challenge is to make each soup as different as possible from the last, while blending in the last soup's flavors. On Friday, we had a tangy tomato soup with vinegar and corn. For Saturday, I made it into a really spicy southwestern soup by adding chili spices, more corn, and black and garbanzo beans. Then today, I mellowed it out with creamed corn, leftover Ragu sauce, spinach, green beans, and lots of sour cream; now it's a creamy tomato-vegetable soup.

Once one's family threatens to revolt if fed soup any more times in a row, one pours the remaining soup into a half-gallon pail and freezes it; any odd leftovers you have in the meantime can be thrown in with it. A few weeks later, you can defrost it and start over. This process can continue indefinitely, or until you miscalculate the amount, and your family eats all of it, leaving you without leftovers.

It's a beautiful thing.

I know, strange things make me happy.

Symbol of Glory

2007-06-01T16:29:00.000-05:00

http://www.worldmag.com/articles/13011

I just had to link to this column by Andree Seu; it made me feel unalone, which is always nice. I myself generally respond to inquiries about the doilie I wear to church with, "It's just a personal conviction," accompanied by the sort of dismissive smile that indicates that is all I have to say on the subject. I have sometimes thought it a rather cowardly response, as if I am afraid to defend my own convictions, not wishing to appear too fundamentalist, or - horror of all horrors! - legalistic. And yet, it is a thing so utterly not worth making an issue of.

The truth of the matter is that I wear it because it makes no sense to me. And I am not good at obeying things I do understand. Perhaps those who are more mature have no need to pin their symbols to their heads; but I so easily slip into self-sufficiency. If I dismiss I Cor. 11 as an obscure and indecipherable passage, really only related to first-century culture, how can I say others are wrong for doing the same with the passages they don't like, such as the ones about homosexuality? Either God is the authority or my own understanding of him is. So I pin lace to my head, at the risk of appearing the pious, submissive homeschooled girl I have never been, in order to remind myself that I don't make the rules about how I approach God.

Is it really worth explaining that to the fellow churchgoer who politely inquires whether I'm a Mennonite?

2007-03-30T16:27:00.000-05:00

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

2007-03-29T16:57:00.000-05:00

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

2007-03-18T15:22:00.000-05:00

"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

2007-03-09T16:31:00.000-06:00

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

2007-03-07T20:51:00.000-06:00

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.

Showers

2007-02-07T17:03:00.000-06:00

It seems that it may be necessary, after all, to throw a wedding shower. I knew, when I agreed to be a bridesmaid for my brother's wedding, that it might come to this. I had been hoping to avoid it, considering that the parties to be showered are in a different state, but the aunts will not be denied.

I have been to my fair share of showers, wedding and baby alike, and I cannot recall having enjoyed one of them. It is like an adult version of a child's birthday party (which I did not enjoy when I was a child either) : the entertainment consists entirely of watching someone open their presents, and playing remarkably silly games. In this case, since the guest of honor will not be present, the first will not even be possible; we will have to watch someone open someone else's presents. Why should I subject my relatives to this? Why?

Wonderboy Returns

2007-02-02T19:23:00.000-06:00

That's the trouble with superheroes: even when you want to get rid of them, you can't. They just keep coming back.

Adventures in Church-Hunting, Part 1

2007-01-28T14:07:00.000-06:00

As I mentioned a while ago, I have decided to try to find a new church out here (or rather, an old church; my main complaint against most of the local evangelical churches is that they seem embarassed by, rather than proud of, the fact that they are doing the same things Christians have been doing for 2000 years). So, while my blog was sleeping, I set out on my quest.

My first stop, on the first week of Advent, was St. John's Anglican Catholic Church in Menomonee Falls, some 45 minutes from my house. An adorable little white clapboard church nestled between houses, it was so inconspicuous that I passed it the first time and had to turn around and drive past very slowly until I saw the sign. Ten minutes before the service, there were only two cars parked behind the church, on a strip of gravel that looked as if it could accomodate perhaps five. This did not look promising, but a van drove up shortly and began to unload children, and I took courage (it turned out, later, that the family in the van were also visitors, but fortunately I did not know that at the time). "We are brave," I said to myself, "we are very brave," and stepped out of the car. (I am sure my habit of referring to myself in the plural on such occasions indicates some deep psychological insecurity, but it does seem to help). I followed the family in the van through a basement door, into a dusty-feeling fellowship hall where my name was demanded by a cheerful elderly lady, and thence through a winding hallway and up steep creaky steps to the sanctuary. A priest in the corner was mumbling something that, according to the bulletin, must have been the office of morning prayer, but from the fifth row where I sat not a word was audible; a woman sitting alone in the front row was the only person giving the responses. As other people came to their seats, I noticed most of them genuflecting before entering their pews, and thought: Oh dear, what kind of church is this?

The bulletin informed me that it was the feast of St. Elizabeth of Hungry. I was quite curious to know who St. Elizabeth of Hungry was, and remain so, for other than the collect which asked that her influence might help us shun worldliness, no attempt was made to satisfy this curiosity. The entire service, in fact, seemed designed to create cognitive dissonance (perhaps Dr. Noe would approve). The priest (who was the assistant, the rector being on vacation) did not speak any more clearly once the service began; he speed-talked through the entire liturgy, leaving me, the poor hapless Bible Church refugee, always half a page behind. I had, therefore, no warning when a hymn was about to begin, and by the time I had consulted the board at the front of the church listing the hymn numbers (for the priest to have said, "Now we are going to sing 120" would obviously have made things too easy) and found the appropriate page, the organ was already well into the first verse. To make matters worse, singing was obviously not this congregation's strong point, and there was no one even trying to lead (the priest returned to the pew for the songs, abdicating all responsibility).

The sermon (homily?) was on "render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's", and dealt with the evils of our modern society so firmly that, had it been three or four times as long, it would have done credit to any Baptist preacher. I did not go up front for the Eucharist, because the bulletin sternly stated that only those who had been "confirmed by a bishop in proper apostolic succession" were invited to participate. As I failed on all three counts, having been baptised by a pastor who thought apostolic succession nonsense, I kept my seat. The entire congregation fit at the communion rail at once; there were only about two dozen of them, seen all together, from the lady in the front row who was too old and frail to kneel, to the young couple whose two year old chattered as the priest passed the elements.

Afterwards, munching on peanut bars in the fellowship hall, I chatted with a couple of ladies of the congregation. "We're a small congregation," one informed me, "but a vibrant one. We're just a bunch of sinners who love God." She beamed with the sort of enthusiasm one doesn't expect to find in dusty fellowship halls. Another, who was there with her two young teenage daughters, was delighted to hear that I had attended PHC. "I've heard such good things about them," she said. "Oh?" I inquired neutrally, "what have you heard?" "I like the fact that they're so unapologetic about who they are and what they believe." "Mmm hmm," I replied. I did not pursue the subject, as there are some things one really can't say in dusty fellowship halls.

Empty

2007-01-26T13:37:00.000-06:00

That's what my blog has been for the past few months: sad, lonely, barren. I would excuse myself on the grounds that I am busy or never seem to get around to it, or something of the sort, but that isn't true. The truth is, I have discovered something that is obvious to most people but had never occurred to me before: words, by themselves, are insufficient. A word that would be real and substantial spoken to friend over a cup of tea becomes pale and wraith-like when isolated in cyberspace. When I write on my blog and read your comments, the sense of distance is such that I only feel more desperately lonely. So, I begin to agree with Dr. Mitchell: community requires physical proximity.

And yet, I am going to give my blog another try. For, inadequate as they are, words are all I have. I have been trying to pretend that I do not need people, that I am not lonely, by ignoring all traces of the community I have lost. And this will not do: one cannot become more real by hiding from reality. Besides, it is terribly selfish to ignore one's friends whenever talking to them would make one feel badly. (Therefore, I do apologize to those of you whose letters and e-mails I have ignored, and promise to answer them soon).

And, since my blog is now resuming, here is a preview of coming attractions:

Notes on Chivalry
Death in Hartford
Adventures in Church-Hunting
Farewell, Wonderboy (tentative, pending Wonderboy's actual departure. You never can tell whether a superhero will return or not.)

The Sort of Things People Say in Airports

2006-11-17T14:57:00.000-06:00

Or: Vignettes of a Quite Ordinary Journey, Part 1

In general, of course, people do not say much in airports. I myself never say anything but "Excuse me" or "Thank you," regarding the place as inherently unsuitable for human interaction. An airport waiting area contains a large collection of impatient, flustered and bored people who do not know one another, have no wish ever to know one another, and have nothing in common save the desire to get to St. Louis. The things that may be said in this context are those that are sure to meet with almost universal agreement, cannot possibly offend anyone, and refer to nothing that is not general knowledge. Even the weather, ordinarily an eminently safe topic, may provoke distress, as all weather that is worth talking about is associated with the evils of airport delays; its like talking about root canals in the dentist's office.

It was, therefore, interesting to hear what people said in airport waiting rooms the morning after the election. Staring up at the television screens which constantly and soundlessly proclaimed the news of the Democratic victory, people exchanged the pleasantries of self-satisfaction.
"I'm ordinarily a Republican, but I must say they got what they deserved."
"Did you hear that Rumsfeld resigned? He should have done it a long time ago."
"Whichever side you're on, you have to admit that the system worked," one particularly grandiose man opined. "That's the way our Founding Fathers designed it: if people aren't happy, things have to change." (Though wincing on James Madison's behalf, I said nothing.)

The overall feeling was one of mutual complacency: we, the people, had kicked the bums out, and this being done, we could all congratulate ourselves and go on about our business. If people were secretly elated, disappointed, or anxious, they concealed these feelings as unfit for airport consumption. It would have been quite improper to note that the change of defense secretaries could have no effect on the continuing chaos in Iraq, or that the Democrats are just as corrupt and childish as the Republicans. Civilized life requires that we take our politics seriously, but not too seriously.

This is the use of memory . . .

2006-11-16T17:03:00.000-06:00

I have recently returned from my first visit to my alma mater since graduation. Before I review Cyrano or say what a lovely time I had (it was marvelous, and I did), I hope you will tolerate another slightly angsty, partially coherent post. (At least you have been fairly warned).

I left PHC, six months ago, in anger and in bitter disappointment. As it is my custom to disguise pain with vague coolness and, where that fails, sarcasm, those of you who never roomed with me probably do not know how angry I can get. But be assured, I was mad. And it was hard to leave the place that way, with nothing resolved and nothing forgiven.

Since then, I have struggled with forgiveness, for knowing that you must forgive and saying "All right, God, I forgive him" is not the same thing as actually forgiving. Nor is trying to look at things from the other person's perspective, or shoving the pain in a corner somewhere where you don't have to look at it. Forgiveness is a kind of death, the surrender of one's right not to be hurt, of one's right to assert any claim against another person, a surrender that is never complete but must be repeated daily, hourly. And I am very bad at it. "Who are you to judge another man's servant? To his own master he must stand or fall, and he will stand, for God is able to make him stand."

Returning to PHC, I was afraid that the bitterness of that last semester would taint every good memory of the place. But instead the bitterness itself seemed irrelevant and utterly past. And it was good. I went to all of my old haunts and recited this section of T.S. Eliot's Little Gidding, which I had run across a couple weeks before, and which seemed fitting somehow.

" . . . This is the use of memory:
For liberation - not less of love but expanding
Of love beyond desire, and so liberation
From the future as well as the past. Thus, love of a country
Begins as attachment to our own field of action
And comes to find that action of little importance
Though never indifferent. History may be servitude,
History may be freedom. See, now they vanish,
The faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved them,
To become renewed, transfigured, into another pattern.

"Sin is Behovely, but
All shall be well, and
All manner of thing shall be well.
If I think, again, of this place,
And of people, not wholly commendable,
Of no immediate kin or kindness,
But some of peculiar genius,
All touched by a common genius,
United in the strife which divided them; . . .
Why should we celebrate
These dead men more than the dying?
It is not to ring the bell backward
Nor is it an incantation
To summon the spectre of a Rose.
We cannot revive old factions
We cannot restore old policies
Or follow an antique drum.
These men, and those who opposed them,
And those whom they opposed
Accept the constitution of silence
And are folded into a single party.
Whatever we inherit from the fortunate
We have taken from the defeated
What they had to leave us - a symbol:
A symbol perfected in death.
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
By the purification of the motive
In the ground of our beseeching."

Perhaps, in the end, forgiveness is nothing other than hope: the steadfast conviction that all things will be redeemed. I do not need to make things right, because God will do that in ways I cannot imagine. Or perhaps this vague, universal hope is another poor substitute for forgiveness. I don't know; I seem to know less and less all the time. But God knows. And all shall be well.

"You look just like the White Witch of Narnia!"

2006-11-03T15:19:00.000-06:00

- yelled from the front row by a ten-year-old boy as I, dressed in Liberty Ball gown and tiara, was dramatizing King Nebuchadnezzer's rage at Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. ("How dare they speak that way to me?! I am the king!! Throw them in the furnace!"). It was "dress like what you want to be when you grow up" night at Awana, so I explained that I'd always wanted to be a queen, so I could throw people who annoy me into furnaces.

I choose to take the comment as a compliment.

The Body of Christ

2006-10-30T15:02:00.000-06:00

I think I need to find a church. Since I got back from college, I've been attending my parents' church (which they started attending during my sophomore year at PHC, so it's never really been my church). I've tried to get to know people there (well, I tried a little bit . . . sort of), and I'm volunteering with Awana. But the experience has been rather unsatisfactory, for the following reasons:

1. I am, so far as I can tell, the only single person between the ages of 18 and 30 in the church.
2. Everyone thinks I am my sister. (Okay, there is one other single person).
3. There are few opportunities for individual discipleship. The church leadership is, to be fair, making an earnest attempt to start small groups, but they're not making much headway. People are afraid to discuss what's actually happening in their spiritual lives because it might not be cheerfully positive, or might offend someone else's theological foibles. Everyone smiles at everyone, but it's hard to get beyond, "How are you?"
4. I would really like to sing in a choir, or help with music ministry somehow, but it's impossible at this church. The music ministry consists of the same leaders every week trying to coax the congregation into singing the praise choruses in tune.

In short, I'm drowning in the bland niceness of standard white-bread evangelicalism. So, with my parents' encouragement, I've decided that I am a grown-up and can find my own church. In pursuit of this goal, I spend most of the afternoon on the computer researching local churches. So far, I have discovered the following (since I'm making lists today):

1. Baptist churches do not have websites.
2. If it says "Church of Christ," it is alarmingly liberal and, if "Church of God," alarming the opposite.
3. The Reformed denominations (CRC and RCA) have delicious creeds (I had never read the Belgic Confession before, and found it perfectly delightful) but are mushy on questions like divorce and the ordination of women. I do not know how much weight to give such matters, especially if the local congregation is theologically sound.
4. The only Episcopal church within reasonable driving distance has a female rector. (Actually, I already knew that one, having attended a Good Friday service there one spring break.)
5. One nondenominational congregation claims to be "orthodox, but not tied to human traditions." The sad thing is, they don't even realize the irony.
6. If the word 'relevant' appears anywhere on the church's website, they should be automatically eliminated from consideration.

Is this dismembered collection of curiosities the bride for whom Christ gave himself up, cleansing her by the washing with water through his blood? But then, I am a dismembered collection of curiosities myself, and He has not abandoned me. One day all things shall be made whole. But in the meantime, how is one to know which dismembered bit to attach oneself to?

Ivanhoe . . .

2006-09-07T15:07:00.000-05:00

is hilarious! I have just finished reading it; for some reason, I had never read it before. When I got to the part where the tragic Jewish heroine, imprisoned by a lecherous knight, threatens to throw herself from the battlements if he comes a step closer to her, I started laughing aloud so hard that my sister asked me, with the tolerant expression she reserves for my most imbecilic moments, if I was all right. (The blond-haired Saxon maiden, in a similar perilous situation, merely starts weeping uncontrollably. Yet she is the one who ends up with the hero. Life is so unfair.)

Etiquette Tip of the Day

2006-09-07T15:03:00.000-05:00

"Polite people do not drop names. If, however, one should drop accidentally, the best thing to do is to leave it where it fell and ask the waiter for a new one."

Don't Let Your Body Interfere With Your Life

2006-08-27T13:54:00.000-05:00

If you ever watch network news (an exercise I, from personal experience, most decidedly do not recommend), you will notice that almost all the ads shown during the news seem to be for some sort of drug. And the basic message of almost all of these ads is some variant of the above. The chief evil of rheutamoid arthritis, or migraines, or overactive bladder is, according to these ads, that they interfere with what you want to do; take our drug, they proclaim, and we will make your body conform so that your life can be exactly the way you choose. The happily cured patient is shown going on vacation, or golfing, or playing with their kids, or doing whatever pleasant activity their body was so rudely interrupting thirty seconds earlier.

Perhaps I'm overly sensitive, but there's something vaguely disturbing here. The message is never, "We will make you well because that is the way your body is supposed to be;" rather, "We will make you well so that you can do what you want." I wonder if there is an inevitable link between our society's obsession with choice and autonomy, and the denigration of the body. If what's most important about us as persons is our ability to choose, then the body becomes a mere accessory - a vehicle for our choices, but not essential to our being.

Everytime I hear someone refer to a young fetus or an embryo as "a blob of tissue," I think, Well, aren't we all?

Poem of the Fortnight

2006-08-08T21:34:00.000-05:00

I know, I haven't been posting; I shall get around to it eventually. In case anyone is still checking this blog, here's a poem in the meantime.

Water, is taught by thirst.
Land - by the Oceans passed.
Transport - by throe -
Peace, by its battles told -
Love, by memorial mold -
Birds, by the snow.

A Delightful Announcement

2006-07-20T15:37:00.000-05:00

My brother Timothy, the hirsute gentleman at left, is now engaged to the charming Abbie (who actually looks better with her eyes open, but that was the best picture I had). *claps hands and squeals excitedly*

It was Timothy's concerns about the logistics of proposals that inspired my earlier post on the subject. In the event, however, the questions proved irrelevant, as he proposed more or less accidentally. He was planning to propose next month, but, in the course of one of those long rambling conversations about life, the universe, and *us*, the beans were spilled, so he decided to just go ahead and ask. Which being accepted, the two of them went to her parents' house to ask permission, and then to the breakwater to watch the stars, and only the next day got around to thinking about buying a ring.

I am rather afraid, though, that the poor boy has no idea what he is getting himself into - not regarding the marriage, but the wedding. When I last talked to him, he seemed somewhat disturbed by the fact that Abbie's best friend, within two minutes of hearing of their engagement, had pulled out her bridal magazines and was poring over them with Abbie. I assured him that this was a normal female reaction, and that he should merely resign himself to being an acessory to a relentlessly feminine event.

Scenes from a Fourth of July Parade

2006-07-09T16:02:00.000-05:00

On the recent holiday, I agreed to accompany my sister and her two dogs to the parade in a nearby town. (It is essential to the proper socialization of pets, she explained, that they be trained to handle such potentially alarming things as crowds, loud noises, candy-throwers with dangerous aim, and candidates for local political office.) She also persuaded one of her dog-training friends to come along with her own dogs. So we set out along the streets of Watertown in a procession: three women, two bulldogs (one tugging on the leash in excitement, the other looking ready for a nap), a hyper-friendly golden retriever, and a comparatively tiny, frenetic terrier puppy. As we walked along the streets where the parade was lining up, the clowns, costumed float-riders, and marching band flag-twirlers all stopped to look at us. The leotarded little girls from the gymnastics school wanted to pet the puppy, and had to be herded back into line by their instructors.

We reached the corner where the parade was to begin and, seeing that the crowds were already two or three people deep along the route, decided to watch from there. So many other people had the same idea, however, that our view was soon blocked and we decided to plunge ahead. Negotiating between the rows of people with the dogs, we made about the same pace as the parade itself, and thus got to hear the stilt-walking Lady Liberty quizzing parade-goers about the history of the Statue of Liberty for four blocks, until at last we found an unoccupied shop doorway to huddle in. An air conditioner on the second floor of the shop dripped at regular intervals, making a small pool beside the doorway and always managing to land on my arm or foot, no matter where I stood.

One old gentleman walked back and forth along the sidewalk, and petted all of the dogs each time he passed us. "You are so bossy," he scolded Sarah, who was trying to make Honey sit calmly to be petted. "How would you like it if she told you to sit?"

An Elvis impersonator's float was stuck in front of us when the parade momentarily stopped. He gyrated his hips and sang "I'm caught in a trap . . . I can't walk out . . ." for five minutes straight. Doesn't that song have verses?, I wondered as I desperately waited for the parade to get moving again.

A physical therapist, dressed as a leprechaun, walked behind a banner advertising his business. What physical therapy and Irish magic have in common, I'm sure I don't want to know.

"God Bless the U.S.A." got applause, blaring from a float advertising a BBQ place (at least, I hope that's what it was), decorated like a Wild West saloon.

Nearly every act, in fact, was advertising something, whether a local business or a political candidate, many for obscure offices. (Who would have thought that County Coroner was an elected position?) The largest political contingent were the green-shirted multitudes supporting the Republican gubernatorial challenger whose name, cleverly, was Green. "Would you like a sticker?" one of them asked the little boy next to us. "Yes, please," he replied. "Oh, you are so polite!" she exclaimed. "You deserve some candy too." She gave him a handful. This little boy, I noticed, was making out quite well in the candy department; his pockets were full already. He never went running after the candy that landed in the street, or ran clamoring to the candy-givers, as the other kids did. He just stood, looking eager, behind the lawn chairs in front of us when people went by with candy, so that all of them thought that he, being in the second row, had been overlooked, and made sure to hand him some. A very smart child.

Home

2006-07-03T15:44:00.000-05:00

The sky is a clean, hard blue, and the fields are a clean, hard green, stretching down to the muddy brown line of the creek. The darker green treeline forms a crisp, jagged border with the sky. The grey fieldstone and peeling red paint of farm buildings break up the purity of the green, just as the stern white clouds break up the blue.

There is a wonderfully expected, unsubtle beauty about this place - the beauty of things that are so entirely what they are. The sky is as blue as possible, without shadings and without haze, and that is its glory. The fields are long rectangles of uniform green, succeeding one another without pause, and that is their glory. Everything, from the clouds to the fireflies, belongs to its place. It is not a stark land, but it is sturdy, without excess. It must be, to survive winter undeformed.

The people of this land are like it: just what they appear to be, only more so. Straightforward, hearty, impatient with nonsense. Hard-working Monday to Friday and drunk on Saturday. Full of summer but hard against winter.

For four years, I kept cheese curds in my fridge, and my dorm keys on a Green Bay Packers keychain, to remind myself that this is where I belong. But now that I am here, what do this land and I have in common? I devise complications within complications; nothing is straightforward, for me. How can I explain myself to the clean, hard sky, let alone to the farmer down the road?

On Hating Hospitals

2006-06-30T22:33:00.000-05:00

My uncle is in the hospital. Nothing serious, it is to be hoped. But a couple days after having a stent put in his heart, he started to have chest pains again. So they have shipped him to the main cardiac hospital in the region, which happens to be some 50 miles away, there to wait until the doctors get around to him, which, considering that it is a holiday weekend and his doctor is on vacation, may be some time. When my dad mentioned a plan of going down to see him tomorrow, my immediate, unconscious and unspoken, response was, "Ugh! I hope I don't have to go."

I am actually quite fond of my uncle, but, like most of the public, I find hospitals viscerally abhorrent. I don't think it is merely because hospitals are associated with sickness and death and are therefore depressing. Like many writers, I am of a morbid disposition and find depressing things fascinating. (You will notice that I said many writers, not all, so my more cheerful Smudgian comrades need not consider themselves insulted.) Although it may have something to do with the fact that this is the very same hospital where my grandmother patiently waited to die a few years ago. She, who had no particular quarrel with death but hated hospitals passionately, wanted to be allowed to die at home, which she eventually was. The week or so she was in that hospital, after we learned that she was dying, was horrible, but not because she was dying. The hospital itself, the labyrinth of steel and glass and tile, seemed like the enemy, because it was built for the sole purpose of thwarting death, and the inevitability of death was in such a context an obscenity. Only outside of the labyrinth, among untrimmed houseplants and dusty bookshelves, could her death be real, could it be dealt with and grieved over.

None of which answers the original question of this post. But, as I once observed in frustration over a Noe assignment: "I don't have answers; I have questions. That's why I'm a Lit. major!"

On the Practical Aspects of Romance

2006-06-29T15:03:00.000-05:00

I was wondering what my readers think about the following questions. Disclaimer: my curiosity is mostly intellectual. I am not expecting anyone to propose to me, or for that matter expecting to propose to anyone, in the near future. But a certain male of my acquaintance was curious what girls thought about this, and I could only give my own opinion; I really have no idea what girls in general think.

1. Should a guy buy the engagement ring before proposing to the girl, and therefore without the girl's input? It's traditional and rather sweet to put the ring on the girl's finger at the time one asks, and one is in a perfect position to do so while one is down on one knee anyway. On the other hand, loving someone and wishing to spend the rest of your life with him does not necessarily imply trusting him to pick out jewelry for you. My personal feeling is, if the guy is not certain about his taste in jewelry (and what male is?), he's much safer asking first and then taking the girl shopping for the ring. But perhaps I am dreadfully practical and unromantic.

2. Should the guy ask the girl's father before or after asking the girl? This probably varies depending on your particular take on courtship. I'd rather have the guy ask me first, because if the courtship has gone that far it should be fairly clear that my father approves, and I'd rather be the first person to know about my engagement. Unless of course the guy is planning a surprise that requires her family to be in on it.

Please comment. :-)

Censors and Nonsense

2006-06-26T16:22:00.000-05:00

I ought to post in here more often, I know. I'm afraid my blog, along with the rest of my writing, suffers from my terror of actually putting words down. "What if I write it and it's not good?" protests my personal Censor. "That's too boring; that's too personal; that's too depressing. What will your readers think of you if you write that?" Censors are at times very useful things to have in your head, but mine is out of all control.

Job-hunting is a horrible occupation. I have tried and failed to explain to my father why I hate it so much, so I shall try again here, in hopes of understanding it myself. For I never know what I think about anything until I write it down and then read what I wrote. The entire thing, from the writing of a resume to the way you're supposed to "present" yourself in an interview, strikes me as vaguely insincere and manipulative, though I recognize that there is nothing objectively unethical about it. I think it has to do with the purpose of words. A word is not just a signifier; it is a gift the speaker gives the listener. One should give someone a gift because it is something they want, something that will give them joy, or because it is something they need, even if it will make them sad. A word which is spoken merely to make the listener do something, because that something will be good for the speaker, is a false gift. Gifts must come without strings - not that a gift should demand nothing from us, for the greatest gift is that which demands everything from us, and no true word leaves the listener unchanged. But a true gift demands of us the very thing it gives us. The word must be spoken for the sake of the listener, not for the sake of the speaker.

Of course, I realize that the people to whom I send resumes and applications do in fact want them, because they need to find someone to do a particular job. Yet, is it for their sake that the job-hunting books advise you so carefully on how to avoid betraying anything negative about yourself? What kind of gift is it to festoon one's cover letter and resume with perky adjectives - "great," "excellent," "excited," "strong"? Words are meant for better things than such games. Since people must be hired, however, how is the thing to be done so that the words give rather than take? Or am I just overly squeamish?

Well, this isn't terribly coherent, but I shall post it anyway. Take that, Censor!

Photos of Maine

2006-06-08T22:56:00.000-05:00

As promised, the monument to Elenora French. A warning to all future Maying expeditions:

My sister and I climbing a rock on the way up to the cliff:

Picking rocks on the shore and, er, disdaining to be photographed:

My brother's interesting photo of a tidal pool:

Old Age

2006-06-08T22:15:00.000-05:00

I remember reading someone (I think it must have been an existentialist) who said, "Death is not the opposite of life; old age is." I think, however, that old age is life, one particular life, squeezed down to its essence, which in some cases is very ugly. Old age is perhaps more frightening than death, because it represents pure, undiluted human weakness. A person is only able to "age gracefully" if he has already come to terms with his own weakness.

Listening to my grandfather talk, I want to cry . . . he will not admit that he has Alzheimer's . . . he blames others for everything and nothing, as if somehow that will make him feel more in control. He has been a hard-working, church-going, Boy Scout volunteering, orderly, moral person, but nothing in his life has prepared him to accept weakness. He has always been certain of how things ought to be, and he has always put them that way. What can I, the young and laughing granddaughter, say to him? How can I tell him that his strength is made perfect in weakness, and that only he who loses his life will save it? He learned all these things in the Lutheran Catechism when he was a boy, and feels no need to be told them. Yet he does need, desperately, to be told.

Rite of Passage

2006-05-29T20:46:00.000-05:00

This is what it means to be an adult: to fix a photogenic smile on your face when all you want to do is curl up in a ball and cry; to politely shake hands with a man whom, at that particular moment, you would far rather slap; to refuse to allow one's perfectly appropriate heartbreak to interfere with the mindless but necessary rituals of life.

Not that my graduation was awful. Dr. Vanderpoel's speech, the cheerful chaos as we milled about Nash in our gowns, Dr. Sander's cap blowing off, the contra dance that night . . . there were far more moments when I wanted to laugh than when I wanted to cry. Yet those few seconds walking across the stage, which according to all the Kodak ads are supposed to be cherished for a lifetime, were, after Dr. Farris' speech, exceedingly painful. (Why did he have to say such things then, of all times? Why does he always have to be so . . . himself?) The day was emblematic of my entire experience at PHC. If I had known beforehand what the last four years would be like, especially with all the things that happened to my major, I would not have come. But I am so glad that I did. God has grown me as a writer and as a disciple through the friendships, the professors, even the untimely death of the writing major. There has been far more joy than sorrow, but most of the joys have been unexpected, unlikely, and not the kind that would look good in a brochure for the college. Some of the highlights:

dancing the Virginia Reel in the street in front of the dorms my first semester
boating on Lake Bob
Smudge!
Dr. Vanderpoel
the comaraderie of the cube rooms at 2:00 in the morning
writing a Stacey paper about the tyranny of the automobile
Dr. Hake's classroom contortions, ramblings on male-female relationships, and infectious joy in God
bobtizing Charlie, the orange inflatable couch
Eden Troupe (Remember the bushes!)
watching Muppet's Christmas Carol when I should have been studying for a Con. Law final
finally understanding T.S. Eliot (a little bit, I think)
spontaneous tea parties
singing in the stairwells
stomping in circles around the tiny patch of woods for 45 minutes, the day the cancellation of the writing major was announced, fuming, until a verse came to mind - "He leads the blind by paths they have not known, along unfamiliar ways he guides them" - and the verse became a song, and my heart grew quiet in God
getting lost on the way to church and finding myself in front of St. Peter's just as services were beginning
singing songs from My Fair Lady with my roommate at midnight, until our RA told us to be quiet
learning how to contra dance
failing miserable to learn how to swing dance

And there are many more. Thanks be to God alone!

Salvete!

2006-05-28T12:30:00.000-05:00

I have promised several people that I would start a blog, so here it is (hopefully).

I am at last home, after a lovely visit to Maine, where my brother lives. (I shall post pictures soon, including one of the monument to Elenora French, who fell to her death on May 7, 1864, chasing her windblown hat on a Maying expedition). We hiked up Maiden's Cliff (so named after the unfortunate Elenora), looked at lighthouses and threw pebbles into the sea, visited a self-conscious cute little winery (unfortunately, I hadn't brought my ID, so I was unable to celebrate my liberation from the Honor Code), and ate a splendidly messy dinner of fresh lobster and corn-on-the-cob in my brother's little kitchen.

I was unpacking all yesterday, trying to figure out what to do with an extra-long mattress pad, a hotpot, an extra iron, and other sundries that are utterly extraneous now that I will be living at home. In between this entertainment, I was negotiating with my sister for dresser and wall space in the room we must now share again, and printing out listings for various more-or-less unspiring jobs (a dry cleaners that's looking for an accountant, a heating and air conditioning place that wants a secretary, and a few banks seeking tellers).

Well, let us post this and see if it succeeds. I hold my breath and press the "Publish Post" button . . .