Listy Tuesday

1. Welcome to Erie. It has been downpouring and thunderstorming since four this morning, and I am enthralled. Dark days of summer rain always takes me back to a dreamy childhood feeling, particularly if I can sit with my face next to a windowpane and watch the falling water blur everything on the other side of the glass.

Seriously, is it naptime, though? I'm so tired I keep thinking I left myself in another room. I think my soul stayed in bed this morning and is even now curled up in body-warmth and sheeted coolness under the summer quilt, dreaming. Which makes my body even more tired.

2. Album of the Moment: Snow Angels, Over the Rhine. (Over the Rhine is so wonderful for rainy days, or snowy days, or any weather-bound days. They always make me want to put on a pot of tea (or a gourd of mate), pour a glass of wine, dig out a favorite erudite book, light a candle and sprawl across a chair with a purring Simon somewhere nearby and something rich and savory simmering on the stove and nothing in the world to do.) I feel Christmasy today, and this album of entirely original compositions (and some original remakes of traditional Christmas songs) is somehow utterly perfect.

Highlight tracks: #1, "All I Ever Get for Christmas is Blue"; #3, "White Horse"; #5, "New Redemption Song"; #8, "North Pole Man"; #12, "We're Gonna Pull Through."

3. Pretty in Pink (But Give Me Brown, Too). I am in love with my outfit today. I'm wearing a floaty melon-toned skirt (the lining is edged in the same color lace -- so secretively pretty) with a chocolate scoop-necked tee and cami of cotton candy pink. Costume jewelry in gold and brown and strappy hemp sandals complete the ensemble. As per usual, I'm all dressed up with nowhere to go, but hey; today, an outfit well-chosen is its own reward.

4. Joss Whedon Rules my Universe, and Now I Know Why. I have a market? Hill sent the link to me yesterday and it cracked me up. I don't do video games or conventions, and I'm more likely to run into a doorjamb than walk around with food on my face, but those paltry factors aside, I thought, as I read the list, laughing, Yes! This is I! I have people!

5. The Psychology of Numbers. I'm not fond of even numbers. I like odd numbers best. I can't tell you exactly why (and I can't tell you exactly why you might care), but thinking about even numbers gives me an uneasy feeling, like there's a spider on the ceiling and I don't know which way it's going to crawl, but I hate that it's there; while if I think about odd numbers, I start to smile, like remembering happy times with old friends.

Maybe I like odd numbers (fine, go ahead, jump in with "because you're odd!"; I know you're thinking it) because the month, day and year of my birth all fell in odd numbers. And maybe I'm more comfortable when things are just slightly out of balance, because then I can fight hard to strike that balance. (I do love a challenge.) Maybe it's Trinitarian of me -- not even God is even-numbered. Who knows.

Also even years tend to suck. I have no intention of turning this into a self-fulfilling prophecy in future, but as I look back over the last eleven years, the even-numbered ones weren't my favorites.

And my favorite numbers? 13 and 49. 7 isn't bad either. And I kind of like 11. (Hm, prime numbers are all odd, and I like uniqueness. Yeah, yeah, 49 isn't a prime number. But I like prime numbers generally.)

6. Like a Bloodhound. Dad says Mom and I missed our calling as drug dogs. Apparently she and I possess a freakishly, uncannily acute olfactory sensibility. Now that Cindy's out of the office (she has Trusty's nose on her, too) and I'm surrounded by the guys, I find myself wrinkling my nose at strange odors and saying, "Ew, can you smell that?" and being met with blank stares. Bad food. Sulphur from the downstairs hair salon. Inexplicably, melted plastic. Gasoline. Yup, I'm all alone in my five-sensoried experience of the world this week. I think the menfolk think I'm crazy.

But man, that melted plastic smell is nasty. It's coming in through all the windows, so this morning, it's the smell of Erie. Why?

7. I Only Have Friends Because of Technology. Last night I video-Skyped for the first time! John is leaving the country for a two-month vacation, and we wanted to make sure we could keep in touch. Once we both got over our squealing and laughing over the clarity of the picture and how cool it was that we could actually see each other, he brought his whole family into the screen to say hi; I haven't seen any of them in about five and a half years. John's mother demanded a visit and couldn't believe how long my hair has gotten since college ("You're so pretty!" she said. "Thanks," I said. "You're so thin!" she said. "I'm leaning forward," I said), and I got to coo over my little "nephew," Gustav (John's Schauzer), for the first time. Simon wasn't around to fix an indifferent stare upon his Uncle John, but John didn't seem too bothered.

I have no idea where I would be without these fantastic technologies. Alone and friendless and mumbling to myself in some dirty alleyway among the feral cats, presumably. Okay, so that's not strictly true. But the best friends I have, have been worth keeping, regardless of distance, and technology has certainly rewarded those efforts with increasing ease of communication. I'm a fan.

8. Oh, Sure, Blame the Secretary, What the Heck, We're Easy Targets. This was the second time this week some guy passive-aggressively snarked at me over the phone for something that had nothing to do with me. I hate when people do that. I don't want to crush them like they deserve, because it would reflect poorly on my bosses, but honest to Pete. I judge a great deal about a man's character by how well he treats the support staff, the underlings, the captive audience, of another office, and I'm less than thrilled with the caliber I've been dealing with lately.

My favorite part of these little stupid incidents is telling the attorneys about it later, however. I downplay it, of course -- I'm a professional -- but even so, Brian and Chris both get really, really mad. Now, I'm hardly a helpless female, but watching them get all apoplectic and ranty because someone treated me badly just sets off a little warm glow under my sternum. I love men.

Well, I love those kinds of men. Not the kinds who bite my head off because they're really angry with the attorney, but too chickenshit to say it to his face, and so will vent their spleen on the nice girl answering the phone. This last guy who said something snide to me just a few minutes ago goes to my parents' church. I'm feeling a nearly irresistable urge to do something with that knowledge.

pretend the dove from above is a dragon and your feet are on fire

Today is the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul. In the homily Fr. David urged us to love the people God has given us to love, as Peter and Paul did, particularly in light of the Gospel reading from John 21: the reinstatement of Peter, the thrice-asked and thrice-answered question, "Simon son of John, do you love me?" and the thrice-emphasized, "Feed my lambs. Take care of my sheep. Feed my sheep."

"If you only accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior and do nothing else with it, it means nothing!" Fr. David said. "A personal encounter with Christ is the necessary first step, but if it stops there, it's all in the garbage. We have to love the people we have been given to love. It's so simple. Why is this so hard for contemporary Christians to understand? Why is this so hard to practice? Our world is driven by fear, by greed, by animosity, by division, by jealousy, by anger -- and often in the name of God. But if we love each other, if we love one day at a time, then we can be more like Peter and Paul, and more like God."

The fight to love as lived by Peter and Paul -- something I have been clumsily grasping at the last week. There was only one strand missing from the thread, so naturally, as I drove to the store to pick up vital necessaries like coffee and hair gel, I listened to Josh Ritter's "Girl in the War." Which I love for a number of reasons. Today, though, my favorite part of it was the thought that, as I muddle through this latest struggle, as I stand at this latest crossroads of love and hurt and try to puzzle out how to proceed, I am watched over, prayed for and agonized with, both in and out of the body, and therefore not alone.

"But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body." (2 Corinthians 4:7-10)

or

Peter said to Paul, "You know all those words we wrote
are just the rules of the game and the rules are the first to go.
But now talking to God is Laurel beggin' Hardy for a gun:
I got a girl in the war, man, I wonder what it is we done."

Paul said to Peter, "You gotta rock yourself a little harder.
Pretend the dove from above is a dragon and your feet are on fire."
"But I got a girl in the war, Paul, the only thing I know to do
is turn up the music and pray that she makes it through.

"Because the keys to the kingdom got locked inside the kingdom
and the angels fly around in there, but we can't see them.
But I got a girl in the war, Paul, I know that they can hear me yell
and if they can't find a way to help her they can go to Hell.
If they can't find a way to help her they can go to Hell."

Paul said to Peter, "You gotta rock yourself a little harder.
Pretend the dove from above is a dragon and your feet are on fire."
"But I got a girl in the war, Paul, her eyes are like champagne.
They sparkle, bubble over and in the morning all you got is rain.
They sparkle, bubble over and in the morning all you got is rain.
They sparkle, bubble over and in the morning all you got is rain."

(Josh Ritter, "Girl in the War," from The Animal Years)

quote of the day (and why i love joss whedon)

Nothing in the world is the way it ought to be. It’s harsh, and cruel, but that’s why there’s us. Champions. Doesn’t matter where we come from, what we’ve done, or suffered – or even if we make a difference. We live as though the world were as it should be to show it what it can be.

~Angel Season 4, Deep Down

treasure

Well, thanks to Michael Jackson's death, the radio stations are playing nothing but horrible music. The guy can't even freaking die quietly but we have to hear all about it.*

I'm not a connoisseur of the radio myself, but Cindy, the paralegal and office manager, listens to it in her office. So she came to me wearing a growly face and said, "All of Michael Jackson's music makes me want to put a bullet in my mouth. Do you have any music I could listen to?"

This is almost as dangerous as asking me if I know of any good books. Got an hour?

I think my whole body lit up. Grinning, I pulled my maxed-out 75-capacity CD wallet from its spot under my desk and flipped through the pages with a slow flourish.

"What would you like to hear?" I asked. "Do you like folksy stuff? Alternative?"

As I selected recommendations, I filled her in, with all the eagerness of an extrovert freshly released from solitary confinement, on the backgrounds of the bands and their particular artistries and contributions to music and what makes them amazing.

She had to peel herself away. But she did take the disc I pressed into her hand, and said she'd listen to more.

Ahhhh. It's like hunting. That moment when you know -- you know -- that the crosshairs are perfectly aligned, the breeze is still, and there's no way in the physical universe you can miss your shot.

Bang.

__________________
* My reaction to the news, as it flashed across my web browser last night, was, "He's dead?...Huh." And then I returned to watching Season 4 of Angel. Maybe it's callous, but come on, people. Do we have to give the weirdest, most warped, saddest and squeakiest wheels the highest concentration of flash-bulbs? Gah.

the irrepressible optimist

The black days never last for long.

Also it helps that it's (finally!) hot and sunny. Hard to be in a glum mood when you can roll down all the windows, feel your hair tangling with the breeze and rock out to something loud. (Hope springs eternal.)

As Meg's and my beloved little (or not-so-little) Nara used to say, in her gruff deep little toddler voice, with her luminous dark eyes intent and serious:

"It be okay, baby."

a elbereth gilthoniel

[Deep breath] Okay. I can do this.

from "Ash Wednesday"

VI
Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth

This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.



~T. S. Eliot

Yet I am always with you;
you hold me by my right hand.

You guide me with your counsel,
and afterward you will take me into glory.

Whom have I in heaven but you?
And earth has nothing I desire besides you.

My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever.

Psalm 73:23-26

at close of day

The sunset over the lake was breathtaking tonight.

Sometimes I think we think of God's creativity as having ceased, or abated, at the end of the traditional seven days: As Josh Ritter sings, "He bent down and made the world in seven days / and ever since he's been walkin' away" ("Thin Blue Flame," The Animal Years).

But somewhere in the world, always, every second of every moment in time, God is creating a new sunset, or continuing variations of the first sunset which has never ended but ripples over the globe like blown water, unceasing and mutable, multifaceted and one. And what fun that must be...

Maybe when I get to heaven He'll let me give it a try. Or at least help. "This shade of pink, God, right there...pretty please? Can I?"

And maybe it would turn out terribly, but I think God would pin it up somewhere on heaven's version of a refrigerator and smile at it fondly as something His little girl did for Him, like a smudgy botched handprinted fingerpaint drawing depicting nothing but the extravagance of a child's love.

Maybe that's how He views a lot of our attempts at being pleasing and good.

yup, it's monday

I just love getting bitched out by shrill little old ladies who can't remember their appointment times. Such an effective way to evoke a warm and sympathetic response from me. Dear, sweet little old souls.

I just watched Liam Neeson beat the living shit out of everyone.

It was awesome.

sweetness and light

A good Sunday, full of light and joy, love and peace.

I find that I recognize today a little better than usual the hand that maketh me to lie down in green pastures, leadeth me beside the still waters...guideth me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

It is well with my soul.

it's a rainy day, it's a rainy day...

No porch blogging today. It's not impossible, of course; I could if I really wanted to. But they say that water has a negative effect on keyboards, and the heavens have decided that the world isn't quite clean enough and are liberally dispensing precipatation designed to echo the prelude to the Great Flood.

Which actually is fine. Yesterday I was all geared up to hate the gray wet weather (fifth rainy day in a row), but as I breezed out the door on my way to work the intoxication of the rainy June smells almost stopped me in my tracks. Locust blossoms, catalpa, azalea, roses, ferns, the spices of wet wood and field all rushed over me and I almost called off work just to go run around in those dizzying scents. Rainy June days are possibly the best all year.

And rainy Saturdays demand plenty of naps, and housework, and langorous stretches and lots of going nowhere and puttering. So delightful.

Except that with the damp boosting the power of every scent molecule, you can really tell that my parents' dog needs a bath.

the disappointed attic

My throat is raw from inhaling insulation dust as I tromped around the office's third floor this morning rearranging the boxes of closed files. The "attic" of this old well-to-do-family-home-long-ago-turned-office is actually the remnants of a finished apartment...and a lovely apartment it was, once upon a time. It has little low windows and little low doors, hobbit-sized, though not round, with high ceilings with trapezoidal arches. The bathroom, where we currently store our old files, was bright and stylish in the sixties, with a wavy glass panel in the wall leading out to the hall, bright orange paint, and orange-striped blinds.

Such a once-adorable, happy little place...that some idiot back in the day hacked apart to install a cooling system right in the floors.

Every time I'm up there I have to tamp down a quick boil of rage. I want to find the person who did such needless violence to this house and shoot him. I hate the way the apartment was raped for cheap modernization -- what wasted space! What a horrendous atrocity! Because the apartment remembers being happy. It remembers being full of light, it remembers people laughing and loving and fighting and hating and dreaming and fearing and hoping within its old walls. And every time I go up there after a file, picking my way through demolition debris, plaster dust, broken glass and insulation, the walls reach out to smother me with their sadness. The apartment wants to love and be loved again. And no one goes up there anymore but me and occasionally my boss.

It makes me want to cry for it, this forlorn little space with giant ducts rearing up and plunging back down through its floors writhing and twisting like serpents, chewing through the boards. It wasn't meant to sit empty. (I wonder if this is something of what haunting really is -- not so much the spirits of the dead, but strong place-memory? Hm.)

But nothing can be done except sweep up some of the insulation and move things around to accommodate records of brief periods of people's lives...and carry around a sore throat the rest of the day.

On a happier note, the Yard of Oddities next door to the office boasts a resident groundhog which I saw do a slip-'n'-slide rolling tumble down the wadded up old wading pool before it hustled in its awkard, rippling run under a bush. I couldn't tell if he were embarrassed or laughing. I was most certainly laughing.

mm...

I remember a post awhile back wherein I commented on people's disappearing tendency to say "goodbye" on the phone.

At the time I thought it was a universal tendency. Now I think it was just a Michigan one. Everyone in Pennsylvania says some variant of "goodbye."

They're weird variants, though, Western Pennsylvania dialect being what it is (that is, unique: The Pittsburgh Dialect is its own animal, distinct from its more widespread neighbors). It's never "goodbye," or even "'bye"; it's a warped version of "bye-bye," that sounds, in gutteral Pennsylvania throats, like "BUH-bye."

Maybe it's not unique to Western PA. But almost everyone here says it. In their voicemail greetings, in phone conversations, in face-to-face conversations. "BUH-bye."

I don't. A few others don't. But I don't say merely "'bye," either. Instead I precede it with a brief deepening hum in my throat: "Mmmbye."

Possibly it evolved from "Mm-hm. 'Bye." Or, if my scant knowledge of linguistics serves me, the "b" sound is the voiced "m" sound, so perhaps it's a trick of moving from unvoiced into voiced.

Whatever. I've tried saying "BUH-bye." It feels odd. So I stick with "Mmmbye."

On a less technically inquisitive, but equally silly note, this morning I put jumbo paperclips on the fingertips and thumb of my right hand and practiced typing and writing with claws. I had to stop after about fifteen minutes when my fingertips turned cold and purple, but the feat wasn't as difficult as I had supposed. It looked vaguely like the exoskeleton of a Terminator. Or it looked, less vaguely, bizarre. As one of the office guys handed me a fax to send out, he glanced at my hand and his eyes kind of got stuck. He's really nice, so he didn't say anything, but his brow creased a little and I could see him thinking, Whaaa?

I pretended I wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary, just as he did. And then when he walked away I grinned and clicked my claws together. Why should animals have all the fun?

why i believe

Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you

to give the reason for the hope that you have.

1 Peter 3:15

When I was little a lot of my experience in being reared in the Christian faith revolved around testimonies. Because I was too young to look up the word for myself, I absorbed, early on, its meaning as defined by my then-fellow Baptists: The account of a person's "acceptence of Christ," preferably beginning with a tale of sin and dissipation, descending to the "rock bottom" moment, climaxing in "seeing the light" (usually accompanied by a specific date, a "spiritual birthday") and ending with a denoument of mended ways.

My family's attendance at a young, vibrant, hip new church of mostly adult converts meant that we heard a lot of testimonies. I clearly remember the joy that shone from their faces as they told of their salvation, and the new life they had found in Christ. Some of the stories were amazing. As I grew older, and the kids' training began in evangelism and "witnessing," I found myself scuffing my feet under the table in shame as we were asked to write out our own testimonies. Mine didn't fit the formula. I had always believed in Christ. I didn't have a spiritual birthday. When I was three or four I was old enough to grasp the concept of hell and had worriedly asked my mother how to avoid going there, and so "prayed the prayer" asking Jesus into my heart, but I remember not feeling much different afterward; I had always believed.

Without an exciting and convincing life of sin and change to offer as proof of God's existence, I hesitated to tell my testimony to anyone, whether in practice at youth group or Sunday school, or when my curious peers asked me questions. Mom told me it didn't matter that I didn't have a conversion experience, that it was a good thing that I had never done anything really wrong, and while I didn't wish that I had committed more iniquities, I didn't like my testimony. Already sensitive to the effect of story, and to how I measured in comparison to others, I hated that I didn't have anything interesting to say about my faith. I thought of any contribution I could make in the testimony arena as boring*.

It was a problem peculiar to people my age, the second-generation evangelicals: children raised in the church. As I progressed through college, I participated in, and witnessed, many crises of faith that stemmed from always having had faith, and having nothing to compare it to. There was no "before" and "after" for us, no dark of unbelief obliterated by the light of belief. There was only the belief, and it didn't keep us from suffering, and it didn't save us from wretchedness, or from meanness within ourselves and within each other, and the cruelty of the world was confusing, and our happy childhood butterfly faith ill-equipped to weather storm gales. Without an anchor point in time, without the moment of reversal, without transformation, we didn't know if what we believed was real. Having never suffocated, we didn't know whether or not we were really breathing.

Without experiential knowledge of contrast -- because, as Ursula K. LeGuin points out in true Taoist fashion, "light is the left hand of darkness, and darkness the right hand of light"; because we know fullness by the experience of hunger, and rest by the experience of exhaustion, and health by the experience of illness; because as human beings we need the binary oppositions targeted by deconstruction -- we did not know peace, having never known turbulence; we did not know love, having never known hate; we did not know hope or joy, having never known despair; we did not know faith, having never known doubt; we did not know salvation, having never known damnation; we did not know being found, having never been lost. Because we'd never died, we couldn't live; and many of us foundered.

I watched a number of good people leave the faith to seek what was really out there, and perhaps by losing it to find it again. I watched most of the people who did not leave cling to the faith as to a casket, refusing to let go, refusing to look inside, refusing to ask questions for fear the whole thing would collapse into decay. I understood the first group better than the second, but I did not fit into either camp. Held to my faith by the mysticism that had been a part of me from before my earliest memories, by that certain knowing running like lava in the marrow of my bones, for which I never asked and for which I took, and take, no credit, I started asking questions. I learned to be angry with God without fear of reprisal. Utterly repudiating the CandyLand approach to belief , particularly as I watched my little sister's body digest itself until she was a bare simulacrum of a living girl, I nonetheless believed.

But the answers I'd been fed my whole life weren't enough. They didn't explain suffering. They didn't explain how to live with horror. I wanted what was true, what was real, and if the way to that knowledge lay through rage, and tears, and blood, and pain, that's what I would choose. I could not abandon my faith, but I would not accept it like a spoonful of sugar. I would not pretend to ignore the dark, as some of my casket-clinging friends admonished me to do. In fighting my way through doubt and questions and fury, with the prophet Jeremiah as my standard, I wrote that while others of my faith skipped in the fields eventually to lay their daisy chains at God's feet, I would approach Him grimy with dirt and sweat and blood-scabbed scars from my climb through the wasteland:

you will stand there with your paper wings
while I stretch weary muscular arms
developed by grasping at weeds;
you will answer the Master’s questions
with scraps of limericks in your hands,
while I fall exhausted upon scarred knees
with head bowed and back bent,
and silently present Him with the keenness
of an anguish-tempered sword. (2002)

I died many times over in those years of my early twenties. I loved God, and hated Him. I trusted Him and feared Him. I clung to Him and pushed Him away. And eventually the turbulence subsided, and I reached stiller waters, having always, however I felt about God, believed in Him. In my naivete I thought I had found all the conclusions I needed, even though most of those conclusions were an acknowledgment of uncertainty; I thought I had asked all the foundational questions, and settled down to a meadow-life of what I thought were well-earned flowers.

My moments of doubt renewed themselves, of course, and I still had my bad times. There was the time the seams of my self nearly unraveled completely, undone by my first real and personal experience of human cruelty and the fear of the unknown, early in the summer of 2006, resolved by a vision of Christ bending over me and holding my face in His hands as I wept, curled up on the porch steps in a downpour at midnight, brokenly saying every Bible verse I could think of into the dark. There was a long period of dryness immediately following, resolved by the work of Sufjan Stevens, most particularly Track 17 of The Avalanche in August of 2006, and "Come Thou Fount" on the second album of Songs for Christmas that December. The first was my experience of divine rescue, of divine tenderness; the second my experience of choosing faith when it wasn't felt. Good lessons, I thought. More battles won. More stones to commemorate another miraculous river crossing, bone dry.

I wasn't prepared for the breathless despair of unbelief.

It came to me in July of 2007. Nothing precipitated it. I was certain I wasn't long to be a Protestant, and that feeling was weird, and I was scared, but it wasn't horrible. I hadn't had a bad day at work. I wasn't feeling lonely. For no reason I could name, I just didn't believe anything. It was the end of a late work day, and I was planning on meeting my boss's wife at the only decent restaurant in the little train track town where I worked in Michigan, and of course everything ran late, so by the time I marched out to my car clinking my keys in agitated hands, I was irritated about being late, pissed off about having lost precious personal time to an all-consuming job, and desolate because I didn't believe in God. The knowing had evaporated like it had never been, and the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach took up most of my concentration.

The restaurant lay on the far side of the tracks that bisected the town, and as I turned onto the street that would take me across them, I noted with annoyance the unusually heavy traffic, backing up so that I wasn't, as I ordinarily was, first to the tracks...and then I noticed the descending candy-striped arms of the railroad crossing guards, the flashing red lights, the warning bell clanging, and the approaching kettle-call of the oncoming train.

"Great," I said.

And boy was that train long. And slow. As it crawled north, I looked as far to the south as I could, between the unadorned matchbox lines of the depressed-looking houses, looking for the last car. But it didn't come. Minutes came and went, and rather than grow irate about something I was fundamentally powerless to change, I devoted my attention to my reasonless crisis of faith. I ran through my favorite Bible verses. I catalogued my surest, clearest memories of God's presence. I told myself, "I do believe...I do." I ran through the Apostle's Creed. I stretched my spirit for any twinge, any flutter, that would identify the presence of God, the realness of God.

Nothing.

I started drumming my palm against the steering wheel in a rhythm and tempo I couldn't identify. I chewed my lip. I faced the fact that maybe, just maybe, I wasn't a Christian after all. Maybe there was nothing out there, nothing more than what I could see in front of me, nothing...
No. I was stubborn, dammit, I had chosen my faith in the face of worse circumstances than this long ago and I was going to keep being stubborn. But I just didn't feel...anything. And it didn't even feel all that bad. I wasn't in despair. I didn't want to jump out of the car and throw myself under the wheels of the train. I thought, I could live like this, if I have to. Lots of other people do. But I didn't want to have to. I wanted to believe.

"I believe in God..." I said aloud to myself, looking south once more to see freight car after endless freight car heave itself into view through the farthest gap between houses. Beyond that last house were trees shrouding the train from view, but it kept on coming, an eternity of freight cars pinning me in place, too hemmed in by traffic to turn around. I fixed my eyes on that gap as I muttered to myself, "I believe in God...I believe in God..." And then, "I believe in God," I said, louder, straightening in impatience and falling into sarcasm, "like I believe there's an end to this train."

And the last car passed through the gap between the houses.

I stared with my mouth open for a long moment, frozen, looking at the clear empty air over that distant part of the tracks. Then I fell back against the seat, laughing weakly. "Okay," I said to God, glancing up at the sky, feeling the sardonic amusement curling the corner of my mouth, "I get it."

Not only was I thoroughly schooled in the self-donned cleverness of my superior intellect, but I almost had trouble driving because my mind was too taken up with all the factors that had to fall exactly into alignment to execute that cosmic zinger. What time the train left from its source. Its exact velocity. Its acceleration and negative acceleration as it made stops. The length of those stops. The cars added and unhitched. My lateness at work. The cases that had been begun months, some years, before, whose elements progressed exactly as they did to the point where they made me late that day. How many cars exactly needed to be in place to put me in view of that last gap, what time each of those people in front of me had to leave from wherever they left from, how fast they drove to reach their place in line, how quickly the final car was able to zip across the tracks before the train and so avoid bumping me back another car length. My train of thought, its exact flow, my anxiety and the transformation of anxiety into smart-assedness, the exact instant I opened my mouth. The chess pieces for that particular checkmate had been laid in place many hours before I knew I had a crisis. And those chess pieces were practically infinite. Every phone call that day, every phone call the day before, everything that had built into that one day, that had built toward that one moment, pacing me as I moved about my life.

I couldn't argue with that.

It wasn't my last moment of doubt. But that was a moment I couldn't deny by calling myself crazy or overly emotional. That moment was a fact, however I feel about it.

It doesn't follow the prescription, my story. It's not a tale of sin and redemption. It's a tale of irony. A little anecdote of knowing suddenly how completely understood I really am. So if anyone asks me why I believe -- if it ever comes up in conversation, with strangers or acquaintances or the dearest of close friends -- my answer doesn't have much to do with a "before" and "after." It doesn't quote pertinent verses that map out a road to belief. It doesn't tug on the heartstrings, has no deep theological reverberations. It only contains a staggering glimpse of impossible statistics and a little dark humor.

I believe in God because of a train. That's the clearest and most honest answer I can give. It's not the only reason. All of the emotions, the visions, the constant sense of the oneness of time, the mind-blowing moments of eternity, the inexplicable strength of love between people, a young lifetime of endless provisions and blessings -- those are present, too, and bear their own witness. But if you really want to know why I believe, and why I can still believe, there's a rusty caboose rattling at the butt-end of some train that can tell you exactly what it took to get where it was in the moment I tried to out-sarcasm God.

And I'm rather partial to the many layers of symbolism in that.



___________________________

* Of course, in typical fashion, I was throwing out the baby with the bath water in sloshing out the boring and forgetting about the weird. Maybe it's boring to say, "I've always believed in God," but not so much, "I've always felt God. I've always known God. Ever since I was a child, looking at dewdrops on a spider's web or the light coming through the leaves or the smell of ferns and pine needles, I knew those things were from God, I knew God was present in those things, and I've always been transported by them. I don't remember a time when I didn't know about eternity." I'm only just learning to say those things now, even to other believers. But still, if I'm looking for pure narrative effect...that'll work.

in your face(book)

Somewhere around a year or two ago I joined Facebook. My main reason for hopping on the wall-writing bandwagon was that I finally could – all of my grad student friends had been booking their faces for awhile, and listening to them reference mass messages and the scandals of who wrote what on whose wall made me feel like the kid locked out of the candy shop for not having a pound note in hand while all the other kids swarmed around buying Wonka bars to their hearts’ content. Unlike sweet little Charlie Bucket, however, I glared through the window burning with resentment. What’s so special about being a student? Why can’t I play, too?

So when Facebook opened its doors to all the little kids – and the old ones too – thus becoming a slightly less skeezy version of myspace (which I have refused to join), I joined just because I could, enjoying the satisfaction of tracking a little plebian dirt onto the graduate carpets.

But that was really my only reason for joining, as I had come to harbor a deep skepticism regarding electronic communication (which has been offset considerably by the appearance in my life, through Blogger, of two intrinsically dear people over the past few years: one through the old pink girly rant blog, and one right here on Coffee Spoons). By my senior year of college I had given up AIM almost entirely, using it only to make fun of stupid people with my sister or messaging John to see when he wanted to meet for dinner. Having watched a number of face-to-face friendships crumble through overuse of the false intimacy of instant messaging (I greatly prefer to build and maintain friendships through email and the telephone, if it must occur over distance, as most of my friendships do), I abandoned it in favor of spending face time with the people whose company I enjoyed, and lost the habit of keeping up with people instantaneously in any deep and meaningful fashion (which, frankly, I still don't think is possible on its own, especially in forums like Facebook, unless the relationship is already well-established, and even then it's only one dimension of the friendship, not self-sustaining).

So when I became a Facebook member, I didn’t friend anyone. I didn’t become a zombie or a vampire. I didn’t join any networks. I didn’t bite or poke or tickle. (I did, however, become a fan of my favorite FOX shows in the event it might in any way contribute to the longevity of said shows.) I just set up my profile and let it sit there, accepting friend invitations as they came to me (and I was amazed by the people who friended me), unless from strangers, and occasionally writing on the wall of a longtime acquaintance. A useful tool, I figured, if I needed to get in touch with anyone. But I preferred the outskirts of the Facebook circle; having gotten through the door, I held onto my pound note and resisted the piles of Wonka bars waiting for me. Entrance was all I sought.

And all went along on a streamtide of relative peace…until my parents’ generation discovered it. I had to laugh every time I got a friend invitation from yet another member of their church – nearly all of them people who have known me since I toddled about on chubby legs sporting cute little pigtails and cloth diaper pins. Say what you want about Baptists, they do two things really, really well: community and food. So when they found Facebook, it was like, as Alan Rickman’s character says in Galaxy Quest, “throwing gasoline…on a flame.” FWOOM. Their enthusiasm for the network threw my generation’s lackadaisical apathy into sharp, shadow-blackened relief.

So I suddenly found myself accepting friendvites and ignoring all sorts of group invitations right and left. My parents’ community is like a whirlpool – they’ll catch you by the heel and drag you kicking and screaming into their midst if they can, and their persistence knows no bounds. I find it largely endearing, largely humorous, and, as I possess the same persistence, I good-naturedly resisted past a lot of their persistence.

Good-naturedly, that is*, until yesterday, when I received an invitation from a well-meaning gentleman to join this group: “we CAN find 10,000,000 Christians on Facebook.”

Where do I start?

This is an excellent summation of everything I hate about contemporary Christianity. Could the name of this group be any more snide, any more self-focused, self-congratulating and self-aggrandizing? Look at us, world. We’re Christians. We’re the people of God.

Give me a break. Had the group named itself “10,000,000 people who love Jesus,” it would be guilty of cheesiness, to be sure (and I still wouldn’t join), but not hatefulness.

Consider the grammar and inflection of the title. Emphasizing “can” implies, and not subtly, that there is a vast degree of doubt in the possibility. Further, it flaunts an in-your-face determination to show up whoever’s doing the doubting (“non” Christians? or Christians? Hm. Was Camus’ story supposed to be “The Host” or “The Guest”? Reader decides) by achieving the “impossible” and finding ten million self-identified Christians on the face of the planet.

But why? Are we flipping the bird to a hostile world (who detests not so much our faith as our obnoxiousness)? Why are we flipping the bird? How are we defining “Christian,” anyway? Evangelicals tend to be the only people who identify as “Christians” rather than by their denominations. Which certainly has its strengths; but with a title like this, the group, consciously or not, is only looking for a certain kind of Christian – a “real” Christian – a Christian who believes that salvation is equivalent to a “personal relationship with Jesus,” that faith itself, expressed in a good life of quiet belief, is not enough.

So the underlying attitude of this group is exclusionary – we’re Christians; you’re not. We’re going to heaven; you’re not. We belong to this club; you don’t – not only to “non” Christians, but to Christians as well. It’s also one of guilt and coercion, with the same implications as a chain letter or one of those ridiculous mass emails that urges you to forward some hoaky message of dripping goodwill and corny graphics “if you love God.” I’m sorry? So if I don’t forward the email or join this group I’m not a Christian? I have to jump on the leave-everyone-else-out bandwagon or suffer the scrutiny of my own people?

All of that annoys me. What enrages me is the purpose. What exactly are we trying to prove with a census count? Why are we so obsessed with our own numbers? Why aren’t we out there looking for ten million people who aren’t "Christians"?

This is what really stokes my furnace. I know that it only takes a second at the most to click the “accept” button and join this group, and so the people who have done so aren’t really wasting any time, but honest to God. Why have we made the focus on our own righteousness? This group sends the message that our time is better spent finding each other than bringing a message of love and hope to people who have neither.

The people of our faith weren’t even called “Christians” in the very beginning; that label happened in Antioch, a little while later. In the beginning there was no name for what we were. There was only the transforming power of love. And while we gathered together in the temple every day praising God, the greatest focus was on saving more souls and meeting others’ needs. Not chalking up another tally mark when someone “prayed the prayer” and grinning around at each other saying, Bully for us!

This group isn’t gathering together to praise God. (You can't even leave a message on its wall, or I would have posted this entire thing there.) This group is gathering together to prove something. And the point isn’t worth proving. In the end, what we call ourselves doesn’t matter. Jesus says in Matthew 7, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” And in Matthew 25:34-36, He expounds upon this notion to tell us, clearly, that what we do “for the least of these” is what matters. And it seems, from looking at the passage, that some of the people who will “make it in” won’t even know about it until that day.

Puzzler, isn’t it? The clearest message of those verses is that crying “Christian” means nothing. And groups like this, which serve no purpose except to make people feel “guilty and judged” (as Mal says in Firefly), or self-important and smug, are “meaningless, a chasing after the wind,” without even a kite to justify the chase.

Isn’t it nice of us to want to close the door of the candy shop on the dirty people starving for some sweetness who don’t fit our label?

Yep, we’re the best.

______________________________
* You knew this was working up to a rant.

offness

I really ought to be productive today...there's so much heaped on my plate...but I just don't feel like it.

I've had a horror of a migraine for the past two days, rendering me shaky and blurry and sick, and I don't feel up to anything more taxing than lying supine with my eyes fuzzing on the television. In trying to exact some framework of order on my room (sometimes I miss, dreadfully, having my own kitchen and my own cupboards and walls; my teas and spices and jars of dried legumes and noodles have been relegated to the dark and damp basement, and my heart bleeds for all my pretty, useful things locked out of sight; at the same time I feel guilty for having them at all and taking up so much of my parents' living space), some way of managing the space so that more of my own things can reside close to hand, I was forced to drive down to the local hardware store in search of wall anchors to rehang a mirror, and it took me a good half hour staring at little signs just to piece together which type of anchor would work best with my bedroom walls. Days like these impose a disconcerting disconnect between the information transmitted to my brain by my senses, and the processing of that information by my brain. I feel like a complete and total idiot, trapped in a linguistic handicap, practically illiterate and barely able to speak to anyone intelligibly.

Plus it just hurts to look at things.

Stupid hormones. I blame them for the descent into the doldrums yesterday and today, and for the migraine as well. It's the crash phase of the cycle, and darned if this month's isn't a doozy.

There's only one thing to do on woolly-headed, tongue-tied, thought-derailed, pain-ridden days like today: Pop in A&E's Pride and Prejudice, putter around with things that require minimal attention and try not to think. Worry becomes easy in this kind of physical framework, with all the chemicals jittering around in my blood vessels making me uneasy and a pincered headache imparting a sense of impending doom, and I know they're all utterly unfounded, so it's best to distract myself from feelings. Nothing they'll tell me today will be truthful, and while I can't turn them off, exactly -- it's not in my personality, temperament or nature; I feel, it's what I do and who I am -- I can pen them up with the application of plenty of strong tea and the wit and subtlety between Eliza Bennett and Mr. Darcy.

I can also be grateful, watching the idle gentry playing ridiculous games to amuse themselves, for the technology that yields up so much more entertainment than "taking turns about the room" of an evening. (Though if I had little to do but read, my reading list would shrink more rapidly.)

making do

Another gray day in Erie. No wonder Western Pennsylvanians are so bitter and resigned. On days when the sun comes out we run around drunk on sunshine, wondering why we're so buoyantly happy. Then the sun hibernates in its den of clouds again and the happiness slides back into grim forbearance and we square our shoulders and go back to enduring, thinking vaguely that everything felt better just a little bit ago and we have no idea why.

It's been such a cold damn spring, and now it's a cold damn summer too. I don't remember the last time the temperature broke eighty -- or even seventy, for that matter. I'd love to be soaking in some vitamin D, but I a.) can't find the sun and b.) can't spare the body heat.

Wherever I'm going next, it had better be a place with lots and lots and LOTS of sunshine.

This afternoon finds me headachey. I started sorting through my massive collection of books, deciding which to keep at the house, which to box away in storage and which to discard altogether. I'm gleefully getting rid of all my Victorian literature, with, of course, the exception of the Brontës, George Eliot and Jane Austen.

I had forgotten how many awesome books I own but haven't read yet. It's giving me ideas. For so long I've been in the habit of strictly organizing my library according to genre, then alphabetically by author's last name within each genre; but the chaos of grouping by size on the cramped bookshelf in my room has inspired me to organize the books I have chosen to keep at the house (the folks generously gave me use of the enclosed front porch for three of my six-foot bookcases) in order by the books I want to read. Books I've read will appear at the very end, in order by how much I love them. Maybe this blatant favoritism won't be fair to my books, but I'm tired of doing things the way I've always done them, and I really really want to read these gorgeous, amazing books. First stop: A. S. Byatt, then Margaret Atwood. And, being products of prolific authors whose works I have purchased in abundance, those will keep me occupied until at least the end of the summer. Given how much I have to do anymore, with the desk job, the grading job, and my newly established morning writing routine, I can't devour books as quickly as I'd like.

I miss having friends around. But since I don't have much time or money, I suppose it's just as well.

Not exactly sure what's gotten into me; maybe I'm death-at-the-end-of-my-rope tired and it's nothing more than that. Everything is going pretty well, and I'm starting to go to daily Mass during lunch on weekdays, which has been a source a great peace. (Although I'm really clumsy at sticking my tongue out for the priest to place the Eucharist on -- I like the tie of the action to God's cry to "open wide your mouth, and I will fill it," so I've been trying it out the old-school way, but I feel like an idiot, so maybe it's back to the cupped hands for me.) The cathedral down the street from the office is the seat of the Erie diocese and extremely beautiful, and quiet, and the Scripture readings so very soft and lovely.

I appreciate, deeply, the availability of church as a Catholic. I firmly believe in time spent alone with God, but some days my mind gets into such a whirl with all the things going on inside it that it's hard to untangle and still it on my own, and I love that I can flee to church and find some sanctuary. And something about Mass is private. I can kneel and pray and pour my heart out honestly to God, and all around me other people do the same thing, and no one intrudes on anyone else's thoughts. Which is nice, because when I get all weepy I don't have to tell anyone about why, and at the same time I know the people who notice say a prayer for me (or, if they're judging me for crying in church, they keep their judgments to themselves). And I always feel palpably uplifted, strengthened, by God's presence, and I leave joyful and at peace.

And yet, while Catholicism holds a great deal of personal value to me, I'm not at all fussed about whether or not I marry a Catholic or raise strictly Catholic children. I value like-mindedness in a man's faith far more than I value how well he matches up to a system. I don't match up to the system; I'm not overly fond of rules for their own sake, and my Protestant roots will always inform my character and my view of the faith. Which makes me a bad Catholic in surface regards; in other regards it makes me an excellent Catholic. I'm learning, as I interact with more "cradle Catholics," what I suspected when I decided to switch ships: that my perspective doesn't match up to the typical Catholic perspective, in some ways, any more than it matches up to the perspectives of my evangelical upbringing. I don't think the way most people think (and neither do my closest friends; Meg asked me over Memorial Day weekend why I'm good friends with so many people who espouse no belief or nebulous belief or different beliefs from my own, and I said, "Because none of us think like everybody else, and that brings us all together. And our characters are similar"), and I don't do things for the reasons a lot of people do them (this is not to degrade "everybody else" or "a lot of people"; their way is great, it's what holds the world together. It's just not me. I'm more of a born reformer, I look at things differently, and I'm learning to embrace that with gratitude and joy, is all: It means that I do have a purpose, and all this not fitting in means the isolation is meant to bear fruit for others, so I don't have to try to fit in, because it's a gift, not a handicap, as lonely as it can be). I am Catholic because it's the only place in the Christian faith where I have ever felt at home, but, as always, I feel much more at home with the Church than with its people.

So I'll always be a misfit, and I'd rather have another misfit, a solid, thinking, self-aware individual to be a misfit with than find some stellar example of the status quo (I don't think I'd do much to make the status quo very happy anyway -- an artist mystic with visions pushing the boundaries of generally accepted orthodoxy with an eye more toward a hut on a cliff by the sea than a picket fence doesn't make for a typical wife). And I plan to raise intelligent children who can make their own choices for the right reasons. (Ah, the idealism of inexperience.) In short, I think that the people who change the world are the different ones, and where my one-day family is concerned I have no denominational demands as long as the house is ruled by open-mindedness and peace, in Christ (yes. The same faith is vital to me. Its expression is not).

Plus a lot of cradle Catholics suffer from that Catholic guilt...and so do a lot of evangelicals. (Boy, I'd really make a nice status quo guy completely uncomfortable. I can't imagine it. I only follow rules that serve a legitimate purpose, I don't believe in guilt and as for opinions -- gah! I'd never be able to say anything.) I refuse to foster the guilt legacy in my children, in whatever denomination they're raised, Catholic or not. (Ugh, isn't there a place where denominations don't exist? Everyone gets so worked up and upset about tiny theological points that don't matter, and then it becomes a huge political negotiation that's utterly unnecessary.)

Well. At least there's beauty and artistry. This week I'm going to call the little parish in my hometown and see about cantoring again. I miss singing.

Sigh.

dear old golden rule days...

School is out all over Erie County. On the plus side, this means I no longer have to drive at a lame duck’s pace through the three school zones lying between home and work every morning (which, as one of these passes by the local branch of the State Police Department where the idiot citizens are terrified to be pulled over if they reach the speed limit of 15 mph and so tend to choke both lanes of traffic going 10, takes for.EV.er). This means I get to drive like a jerk for the sheer fun of it.

But every penny has a flipside. This morning, bright and early, through the open window that lies between my desk and the apartment building fifteen feet from the office wall, broke the unmistakable cries of the invisible neighbors’ invisible children invisibly masturbating to invisible porn. I have my own (strong, abrasive) opinions about pornography, but what raised the hackles of my librarian soul in this case was their abandoned reversal of the old “children should be seen and not heard” adage. Obnoxious. The one kid didn't sound like his voice had even changed yet. (Train 'em up early, right, America?) I thought, Oh, boy...and then, Oh, no. Three months of this. (Although it's kind of funny trying to hold a telephone conversation with clients, attorneys, real estate agents and loan processors with sex shouts in the background.)

So I’m all for summer vacation being repealed. Idle hands...(HA).

Plus if I don’t get three months off anymore, nobody else should either.

Rrrrrrrrrrrgh. I forgot to take my allergy meds again last night. Now my skin feels like it's crawling with centipedes.

Itchy itchy itchy itchy itchy.

And where did that enormous bruise come from?

mind over matter

I'm slowly establishing my morning writing routine.

Changing my routine always presents significant difficulty; my circadian rhythm is wired like a Toyota, or a Duracell, or an old small town, or a mule. Even when my mind wants to get up earlier, my body screams and clutches the pillow and drags my mind back under. So forcing my eyes open and my body into an upright position and dragging my laptop onto my knees an hour earlier than my habitual rising time has been a precarious battle.

But I'm winning, dagnab it. I'm winning. I'm exhausted, but hoping that will send me to bed earlier so that rising early becomes increasingly easier.

And I'd forgotten how much I love writing fiction. How much I love feeling the characters suddenly become real -- not characters, not conceptions of my imagination only, but people, with their own secrets and drives and guilts and tastes and joys, all of which shape the story in ways I didn't imagine when I started it. I learn, I discover, even more than I create. It's my own adventure, a gradual omniscience, and then mine is the task of rendering the words properly -- the craft of expression.

I write best in the mornings, when my mind is fresh and the day is new and nothing has happened to preoccupy me. I'm a cleaner conduit for the story, for the words, like the water-scrubbed morning air is a cleaner conduit for light.

(Oh, look. You can tell I'm tired. My paragraphs aren't really paragraphs.)

The only bad part of morning writing is reentry. Once my world absorbs me, the world in which I write, my own separate dimension, it doesn't really let me go. Tearing myself away in order to shower, eat breakfast, dress -- such trivial, mundane concerns (I totally get why Annie Dillard subsisted solely on Coca Cola the entire nine months she was manuscripting Pilgrim at Tinker Creek) -- hurts like parting with skin, and my mind keeps drifting back to its own place in shredded wisps like fog, and I have an even harder time than usual concentrating on the dailiness of the tangible present. I keep turning over character, plot points, symbols, the significance of an event in the story that I know occurs but still don't know the details, how the events and the symbols, the past and the present of the story, are linked, working out the patterns, the tensions between themes...

And then I answer phones like an idiot, and don't hear when people ask me questions, and bump into things.

So it's really, really hard to come back. But I do, and all day I stoke the story respirating hot and low and deep like coals in my mind, in my gut, in my bones, so that when I can return to it, it only needs a touch to blaze into a furnace and roar out my eyes and my fingertips while I smile as it burns.

lovingly, its part of pain and pleasure...

This is one of those days where all I want to do is curl up tightly around a heating pad, take about half a billion Ibuprofen while really longing for shots of Phenergan and Toradol (I want that angry little organ that rules my biological life to relax), and try to pretend my body is a figment of my imagination. Some days womanhood just hurts.

Of course I believe that in the end it's all worth it, and that pain as a frequent means makes the ends more precious. I also prefer this more natural state to what chemicals will do.

But even so. DUDE. When my uterus sits like a clenched fist in my gut and the nausea rolls over me in muscular waves and I can't decide whether to put my head down and cry or run to heave my face over the toilet, life is just unpleasant. At least there's usually only one really bad day and the rest are pretty bearable.

The usual back twinges that occupy the Spine of Satan during this time have been exacerbated by the books I carted around in canvas bags on my literary scavenger hunt for two hours yesterday...but oh, it was such fun. The old gymnasium was hot and stuffy as it always is (really, it's a gym. Better air flow should be automatic, right? Why are they always stifling?), and the mountains of books were enough to call my soul into a chorus of song. Not many of them were terribly good, though; or I've become much more discriminatory. At any rate, I sifted and sorted every twenty minutes or so, weighing and measuring and putting things back, and in the end I had handpicked around fifteen treasures for under twelve bucks. (As Bridget Jones would say, v.v.g.) They're mostly books by Anne Tyler, Barbara Kingsolver and Joyce Carol Oates, with one beautifully bound Wally Lamb; the really good stuff I've been wanting I didn't see, and what I did find I already, thanks to my exquisite literary taste, call my own. (I did snap up one or two of these to press upon unsuspecting friends. It's less generosity than a deep desire to lure people down the path of my kind of good reading, and shamelessly using my friendship to compel them.)

But even when only moderately successful, rummage sales of any kind feed something hungry in my genetic makeup. I don't know which part of my northern European heritage to credit, but generations upon generations of skinflints, frugalites, misers and Scrooges, with a narrow but exceedingly persistent vein of romanticism, have culminated in a passion for picking through unpromising boxes and piles of junk hunting for that one bit of treasure just waiting for my hands to fall upon it. If you want to make me really, really happy, kidnap me and take me antiquing, or to the Salvo, or Goodwill, or a neighborhood yard sale. It will keep me entertained for hours as I pore over misbegotten trinkets and overlooked books and strangely shaped pottery (I love pottery) and deadly old tools and handcarved chairs and wooden boxes and tarnished shiny things. Just bring a book if that's not your idea of fun, and be prepared to tolerate me dragging you all over the place squealing, "Look! Looky this!"

In other news, the weather is gray with the contemplation of rain, but the year's first roses have burst their floodgates all over the city, and the hazy air along the three blocks' walk back to the office from the noontide daily Mass was haunted with the holiness of roses.

Saturday morning rambles

You know what I want? A sleeping porch. I'm sitting on the back deck blogging, and the temperature has finally surpassed 70, and the sun and the breeze and the richness of full-sized leaves has me wishing I could be among them as I slept, and wake up with the dawn and watch the world turn to color. A nice, deep, screened-in sleeping porch opening onto a wild backyard with plenty of trees, that's what I'm wanting. On calm nights I could listen to the trees susurrating in the wind (there's always wind, near the lake); on rainy nights I could relax to the serenade of rain on the roof; on stormy nights I could lie awake and snug in bed, shivering in electrified delight at every silent blossoming of light, at the thunder ripping the fabric of the sky apart. And then I could get up in the mornings, go in the house for a cup of coffee, and take it back outside and crawl in bed with it to soak in the first part of the day.

So my one-day dream house has a kitchen almost as large as a house itself, an octagonal study (perhaps separate from the house) with a high domed roof, and a sleeping porch. I mean, obviously it has other amenities as well, but I haven't planned those. It's set in the countryside of somewhere on the face of this world, somewhere where the landscape peaks and rolls, and where there are woods.

But really that's mostly because I haven't lived anywhere there weren't woods. I have always detested the thought of endless Midwestern prairie (Laura Ingalls Wilder I ain't), but I've never lived in the desert, or the mountains, or the tundra, or the savannah, or the coast. I wouldn't mind a stint in all of those landscapes and more, because when it comes to land you never know what you love until you've lived there. I do not love Indiana; I do love Michigan. I definitely love Pennsylvania. But when you boil everything down, none of those places are vastly different from one another. If I were to go somewhere with a different kind of landscape, I may find I loved that in its own way like I love the trees.

Because I love the trees. I love their height, their balance of stillness and motion, the way they root the land. I love their life. I could sit for hours watching the sunlight filter in its many shades of green and gold through the leaves, tracing the patterns of the shadows the leaves throw upon each other, shadows that are only darker shades of green. I'm staring at them now. Clearer and purer even then glass, and so perfectly balanced against the hazy blue of the sky. Blue and gold, and green. Lovely colors.

I've been thinking lately about fear, and guilt, and accountability, all of which I hate, one of which I have begun to fight, one of which I've worked at conquering these last eight years and one of which I have utterly rejected. (Yes, I utterly reject the notion of accountability. I don't find anywhere in the Bible where it says that we must give account to one another. We are to encourage, support, admonish and confess to one another, and at times confront one another, but the foundation of all of that is love, and none of those things are designed to hold a person accountable, but to come alongside a person and help him further along the road. It's more a "no soldier left behind" thing than "hey, you, look at what you're doing wrong, you're answerable to me for that which is none of my business!" The only person named in the New Testament as "him to whom we must give account" is God. To me it is irreverent to assume that role in any way. Further, the contemporary concept of "accountability" is founded on guilt, and I don't need anyone else making me feel guilty for something I'm not doing well; I know my shortcomings and failures acutely all on my own and feel terrible enough about them without someone pulling a long face and asking me "how my walk with the Lord" is going. Presumption! None of your effing business!

But then again, I could name a handful of people right now from whom I wouldn't mind more penetrating questions, from whom I would even welcome them -- well, first of all because they wouldn't ever use the phrase "your walk with the Lord" (ugh, ugh), and second because they know me, and they love me, and they understand me, and the relief of their knowledge and love and understanding gives me freedom to be honest instead of defensive; allows my vulnerability. It's not that I never want anyone telling me I'm wrong, it's that the people from whom I allow that kind of intimacy are very, very few, and almost never the people who ask the question or give the unsolicited advice. And the people I do allow to ask me those questions, to voice their concern, aren't always even professed Christians. But they do have my deep respect, and they all strive for a level of uprightness that puts a lot of Christians to shame. And the professed Christians whose uncomfortable questions I would welcome do the same. From them I wouldn't reject questions normally attribute to "accountability." ("Let a righteous man strike me: it is a kindness. Let him rebuke me; it is oil on my head. My head will not refuse it.")

I suppose my pride could stand to be taken down a few notches. But I don't barge into people's lives and ask them, when I see them in a bad mood, how their devotions are going, or how their walk with the Lord is going. To me that's utterly disrespectful. Most people know what they're doing wrong anyway; it's much more effective to ask, "What's wrong?" or "Hey, are you okay? You don't seem so good." At which point, once they get off their chests what has triggered whatever is wrong, they'll go into the real reason why they're not doing well, and that's when you can encourage them, instead of keep them accountable. No one is answerable to me. How could they be? I'm far from perfect. And if a person has wronged me, amends must be made and a confrontation may be due (and conflict is good because its resolution brings about deeper understanding and fewer future transgressions; the more people communicate, the better they understand, and the more protection they have against hurting each other), but ultimately mine is the responsibility to forgive, not hold them answerable.

Love, love, love. It's not about being right, it's not about pointing out to someone the error of their ways, it's not about how well we're following the rules, a number of which are human constructs anyway although they've been glued to certain interpretations of Scripture. It's about love, which keeps no record of wrongs, which does not delight in evil (or perhaps in being better than someone else for the joy of judging them) but rejoices with the truth, which always protects, always trusts, always hopes and always perseveres...and which never fails.

Here endeth the rant.)

And even though it's a lovely warm Saturday begging my presence at the beach, I really need to grade essays. And clean my room. Sigh. At least there's that wedding reception tonight.

Oo, maybe I'll beach it tomorrow, if the weather's nice. Erie is holding its annual Great American Book Sale tomorrow (an entire school gymnasium filled with semi-truckloads of used books, all sorted into categories and at delicious prices). I have a few dollars saved up and I plan to be discriminating about the books I buy, but I haven't been able to attend this event in a few years and it was Leigh Ann's and my favorite event of the summer. There's something unbeatable about the crush of booklovers elbowing their way in to snatch particular favorites, exclaiming and ooing and ahing over suddenly discovered treasures, and asking each other to keep an eye out for this or that title, everyone suddenly rivals or friends, no longer strangers, but compatriots in this one primal adoration of the written word and human creativity...and the American love of a good bargain.

I must pack a few sturdy bags to hold my finds. And I'll wear my bathing suit under my clothes, if the weather's nice, because the school where the sale is held happens to be about half a mile from Presque Isle.

Excellent, Smithers.

surely goodness and mercy

I was going to focus this post on how tired I am, since I haven't slept well in about six weeks and today I'm dizzy with it, but then I started thinking about the reasons I haven't slept well in six weeks, and then I started thinking about all that has happened in the past six weeks, and the past two months, and then I was simply overwhelmed with gratitude.

I am so thankful for my life. I am so thankful for the directions in which God has guided me recently. I am so thankful that things didn't pan out with Dustin (oh, God, I am so thankful. He's a good guy; but we were so wrong for each other). I am so thankful for all God's intense and continual "waves and breakers [that] have swept over me," teaching me more than I would have thought I could learn, all at once, all intricately linked, all connected like each line in a spiderweb is connected, all glittering and refractory and breathtaking and beautiful like sunlit drops of dew on the strands of the spiderweb. I am so thankful for where everything is, right now, exactly as it is, each piece and facet of my life. I am so thankful for the future, for renewed vision, for the bright hard forging of purpose; and so thankful for the change that lies between what is and what will be. I am so thankful for process, for love, for the people to whom I am connected by love. I am so thankful for words, for Story, for creativity; so thankful for all the talents with which I have been entrusted; so thankful for a life in which to put them to work.

I am so thankful for the love of a God to whom a brutal mortality was less painful than separation from me. Who gave Himself up to death for His own sake as for my own, that He might not suffer the loss of me. Who considers that He too benefits from my salvation, because He loves me for my being, irrationally, because that is love; who is teaching me to love that way, teaching millions of others to love that way, that fear might finally wither and die and all be one, and free.

I am so thankful.

veni. vidi. vici. mwah ha ha...

This weekend I am attending the wedding reception of someone I hate.

I am perversely looking forward to it. As a boy, this man was one of my best friend's playmates -- his mom and Hillori's mom were both teachers and of "Old North East" stock -- and yet he and I never took to one another. He was mean to me, and I ignored him. This was our pattern. Since he was a year or so older, I didn't really have to put up with him in school, but as he lived down the street from me, he loved to ride by on his bike hurling nasty insults. Granted, I was a weird, quirky, imaginative kid who loved to be weird, quirky and imaginative out in the backyard, and he was popular and had longstanding social standing going back generations whereas my family were mere transplants; but his malice was unwarranted.

So we grew into adults who still hate but studiously ignore each other whenever we happen to meet by accident in public.

A deliberate run-in with him -- in celebration of his wedding, no less -- arose when Hillori called me a few weeks ago.

"Okay, I know you hate each other, but hear me out," she said as soon as I said hello. "I'm going to JerkBoy's* wedding reception in June. I don't have anyone to go with and my invitation says 'Hillori plus one.' I want to hang out but it'll be a busy weekend and this would be my only opportunity to see you before I leave town again. Gina's going, so we'll all get to spend some time together. Plus EvilEx** might be there and it would be nice to have a buffer." She took a breath. "Will you come with me?"

"Sure!" I said.

I think she was expecting me to say no. Or at least have to think about it.

But I actually derive great pleasure from throwing my enemies for a loop. I love deliberate moments of that slight startled pause followed by a series of sidelong glances which are polite society's version of "WTF?!"; and I particularly love causing this with the subtlety of behaving in a perfectly ladylike manner. The best form of rudeness, in my experience, is politeness.*** My mere presence will be mildly discomfiting, and I do fairly well at parties, so others may not notice. And he will have no reason to be upset that I'm there. Plus this situation has the added bonus of exploiting a loophole in the system, and I'm always happy about that.

There's just going to be something so...deliciously Jane Austeny about standing there in the sunshine at a garden party shaking his hand and smiling and congratulating him and partaking of his refreshments when both of us know I don't give a damn.


________________________________
* She used his real name but I'll call him JerkBoy to protect his jerky identity.

** She used his real name but I'll call him EvilEx to protect his evil identity.

*** I got to do this in church at New Year's when I attended Gina's parish with her. The cantor looked vaguely familiar, and while I couldn't remember who he was, I knew I disliked him intensely. So from my front-row seat I stared at him throughout the entire Mass with narrowed eyes, trying to place his identity, and my instinctive contempt must have shown on my face, because his eyes caught mine once and he faltered, and during the rest of the service his eyes kept flickering nervously past mine. I was fascinated by my apparent power to make him uncomfortable and tried using different expressions. He got progressively more nervous. After Mass he positively vanished, and Gina said, "Did you see the cantor? Isn't he cute? His name is EgocentricAsshat^."

Everything clicked then and I started yelling. He had in his egocentric asshat youth managed to screw over my sister, my best friend, and also the daughter of one of my mom's close friends, among others. Hating him was easy. And then I laughed for the rest of the day at how uncomfortable I had made him when I still didn't realize who he was. He certainly remembered me.

^ This name too has been changed to protect his egocentric asshat identity.^^

^^ Actually I changed all these names to protect myself; working in the legal field drives me to do that. If these all get into a book someday I may yield to the sore temptation to hire a great lawyer and go right ahead with the real names. Bring on the mean; I will make you immortal.^^^

^^^ Credit goes both to Shakespeare and A Knight's Tale for that concept.

Irresistably in the mood for Dark Angel.

Well, not irresistably, I suppose. I'm resisting right now. But it pulls me, this mood, like a refrigerator to a magnet.

This has basically been, in some mundane (I keep forgetting things), some slightly less mundane (I forgot to look at the oven dials, turned on the wrong one, and set the stove on fire) ways, a week of Mondays.

Maybe this means I won't get any Mondays for a month. If that's the case, I'll call it a fair trade.

come on, now

Dear weather,

In case you're like me and forget to change the months on your calendar, it is now June.

Traditionally June is the month for warmth and green things, for balmy 80-degree days and lots and lots of almost honey-thick sunshine.

I don't know what you're doing, bringing in this cold gray crap, but I believe I speak for the entire county, and perhaps the entire state, when I say that we were over this stuff in March.

Let's get with the program, shall we? We'd like you a lot more if you'd do what you were supposed to do this time of year and give us weather for as few articles of clothing as possible instead of jackets and sweaters.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for pushing envelopes and rethinking the system and not doing things just because that's the way they've always been done. But I believe that in this case, sunny hot muggy June days stand for a system in perfect self-harmony. It's a box I'd like you to think in. This is Erie. Not Forks. And Erie is generally bad enough.

woodcall

It was one of those misty rainy mornings where, as I sped over the highway late for work, I looked over the rolling hills, the vineyards and fields, the woods blowing silver in the wind, and thought, If I could only stand in one place for long enough, I might see one of the fey folk looking at me with bottomless eyes, straight and silent from the shelter of a tree. It was a morning gray with the promise of mystery, of secrets, if one were only patient enough to sit wet and still and wait for some hushed unveiling.

I experienced a sudden moment of brutal temptation to keep driving, to turn toward the woods, leap out of the car and plunge among the soaking ferns. Of course, if I were to yield to such a whim, I would probably wander around lost and hungry, and be listed months later in the papers as "missing and presumed dead." So I aimed my car for the city and came to the office; but I couldn't help wondering if such a disappearance would be a death in fact, or a subsummation into an otherworld that at times borders our own.

When I was a girl, I loved the woods. I spent every second in them that I could, which was only periodically in the summers. Last weekend as I crossed into PA from Ohio, I peered into the Pennsylvania woods lining the interstate and realized with a thunderclap of horror that it's been years -- yes, years -- since I hiked through them -- not just in PA, but anywhere.

This must change imminently. Mom calls me her dryad. I love the trees, love the things they whisper to each other when you're alone with them and listening, love the creaks and pops of their living and dying, love the furtive bursts of motion in the deadfall where hidden creatures pursue their business away from hungry eyes.

Thank God for weekends off. A pilgrimage to my sacred temple is long overdue.

progress

Nasty flashbacks today. The boss wasn't in a good mood, and, although I know, and have known since I met him, that he's not the kind to take it out on anyone else, I had a knot in my stomach making me feel sick all day and I couldn't breathe. I kept reliving old scenes from another job -- not not so much old scenes as the moments between those scenes, those quiet things I would do to keep my head down and out of the way of others' tempers, most particularly standing at the copier using its noise to screen my upset breathing and hoping to God no one would notice or need me -- that sometimes had my hands shaking, and sometimes sent a rise of panic surging through me so that I had to force deep breaths and tell myself, It's not happening now. This is different. You're fine.

Fortunately these days don't come often, but this one was a doozy. I rolled the window down the whole way home just so I could breathe the steady rush of free air. The evening went much better, and tomorrow will be fine.

But I'm glad today is over. I know these little flashes of badness are part of healing, part of being strong enough to cope with unpleasant memories heretofore blocked, and therefore stand as a mark of progress rather than regress. Still. Ugh. Not fun.

In other news, I'm working on a little fiction writing again, starting off by rewriting a story I'd written my senior year of college -- the idea holds volumes of promise but the mechanism failed -- and I'm pleased with the progress I'm noticing already in my fictional prose in that space between now and five years ago. It helps that I'm not perpetually pissed off anymore, and helps too that I've spent so long writing nonfiction that my fiction has improved a little in clarity and concision. I think a smidgen of wryness has crept in too, to salt the earnestness which I can never expel.

So all in all, on my end, good.

lesson for monday

It is always a stupid idea to wear your pretty white silk top on the same day that you bring leftover spaghetti for lunch.