the spirit of the liturgy

I have decided that I should always read Ratzinger/Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI directly following Hans Urs von Balthasar. That way he will seem simple, straightforward, and accessible, like he did when I read Introduction to Christianity in Tim's Theology class.

The Spirit of the Liturgy requisites another read-through or two, it is so dense. There are so many layers of analysis of this single one-hour 'event,' the Mass, that the reader might think it would take a week rather than an hour. I suppose this is why Ratzinger stresses over and over the essential overlap between 'once for all' and 'always.'

I don't understand what that means. If anybody would like to explain it to me, please have at it.

Actually, that goes for about the whole book. For the most part, I can grasp it intellectually, but there is some integral element of something that I just can't get a hold of.

Last winter, I ran into this sort of issue with ISI's Christmas celebration. We had worship music and reflection time... candles... musicians on real instruments (besides guitar and piano, anyway)... and the use of one of the dorm chapels. It was beautiful. Until the end.

There were flautists behind the altar (it was a small room; no space for them elsewhere). There were groups of friends hanging out in the chapel and talking (they didn't feel a push to move downstairs). There were people walking around the room without bowing or genuflecting (they didn't see any need to).

And there were people very, very upset at the lack of respect for the space.

What? Incomprehensible. Why would anybody need to be respectful of a ... place? A physical location?

There is a chasm between evangelical Protestantism and Catholicism that cannot be bridged merely by intellectual work. To move from the thought that all people, places, and things are equally sacred (usually meaning: not at all sacred) to the perspective wherein certain physical entities or postures are holy, and holier than regular things, is not just a slight adjustment or attuning.

The kind of reverence Catholicism asks for is not just the feeling of hushed awe that comes from entering a beautiful cathedral, resonant in light and sound. No, that same feeling can come from something as innocuous as Riverview Road at 7pm on a sunny day. This reverence is not a feeling, it is a knowledge: one that is as much exercised in the Pasquerilla West Hall Chapel as in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart.

It's not difficult to acknowledge. It's difficult to know; to know in a way that actually changes the way you interact with a space, with a time, with an object, with a position. That said, I suppose the gulf between evangelical Protestantism and Catholicism is that I don't need to know? Not like that, anyway. If I did know, I guess I wouldn't be an evangelical Protestant anymore.

life of pi

I know this is risky, airing my secrets on the internet and all, but here goes:

I take introductions literally, like, assume them to be truth.
And I thought that Life of Pi was a true story for about 200 pages.

Spoiler: it's not. I think I was convinced of that somewhere around the cannibalistic algae island. Yeah, it took me that long.

Aside from embarrassing, I find this predicament to be delightfully appropriate. Because, in the end, isn't the whole book about answering the question, What is a True Story?

I always appreciate questions like that, and I always appreciate works of art that wrestle with them beautifully and with excellence. What better way to discern the nuances of art than through art? What better way to define a story than through story?

While I applaud Yann Martel for dealing with this question in so skillful and persistant a way, there is something about it all that sticks. It doesn't feel right. The ending feels forced; like the main character's voice is too omniscient. It's too careful, too calculated. The end wraps up too conveniently with too much of a sermon in it (I should have expected that, seeing as the tagline of the whole tale is that it would make me believe in God). There is a catch in the Beauty, which, in my experience, means that there is probably a catch in the Truth. If only due to the principle of meta.

The Principle of Meta: The outside layer is affected by the inside layer. Necessarily. If there is a bump on my turtle's neck, it will show up through the turtleneck.

Granted, causality only works in one direction. The principle does not require that anything wrong with the outer layer is caused by the inner layer; it just notes that it may be possible. If there is a bump on the turtleneck covering my turtle's neck, I might assume that this is because there is a bump on my turtle. But there also might just be something wrong with the sweater.

With stories, at least with well-written ones, a lot of times it does run the other way, and there is a bump on the turtle.

The question Martel deals with is an important one. Is there a difference between what is True and what is Real? Maybe. Yes.  I can see that. Truth requires meaning, order; Reality requires only facts. This is why Truth tends to make better stories.*

But how do we know what is a True Story? According to Life of Pi, the answer is: well, whatever you like best. Believe what is Beautiful. Because of the principle of meta.

And darn it, this makes sense. If there is a story that is really Beautiful, it must be True. Right? If the outer layer is unaffected, the inner layer must be okay. If there were a bump in the Truth, it would mar the Beauty. Platonic ideals and all. I wrote a whole 20-page paper about this four years ago.

But somehow what Life of Pi is saying just doesn't sit. It doesn't. If the only qualification for something to be True is that it is Beautiful, then yes-- you should be a devout Hindu, Christian, and Muslim, simultaneously. You should tell two versions of all stories and believe the one that sounds better. Or both, if it suits you.

I think this is the issue with the novel. Here, ultimately what 'beautiful' comes down to is what suits you. What is attractive? Must be beautiful. Must be true. It is how Pi treats religion. It is how the Japanese officers treat Pi's stories.

That is one heck of a bump on my turtle.

It seems right. That a Beautiful story would also be True is everything we want. It's the sum of our experience and feeling of art. But we can't leave it there. Beautiful is so much more than what-appeals-to-me. It is a very definite and solid measure based on a transcendent standard, like Truth.

--at least, like we used to consider Truth. As far as novels go, Life of Pi sums up very nicely the assumptions and consequences of a modern understanding of ideals. It's not only moral relativity, where Goodness is dependent on what appeals to me... and not only personal preference, where Beauty is dependent on what appeals to me... but also straight relativity, where because of the first two things Truth is also dependent on what appeals to me. And it's all right here, conveniently stuck in one novel.


That said, Life of Pi was for the most part enjoyable and fabulously written. I recommend the book if not the worldview.





*If you're feeling ambitious and want to see that for yourself, go read The Gift by Nabokov.

everyday church part 2 (the response)

I found this book (Everyday Church) incredibly challenging. It is asks, How do Gospel communities in the 21st century do mission effectively?

mission = evangelism + discipleship

That's what we're all about, kids.

Post-Christendom, there is a serious need to approach missions with creativity and gospel intentionality. It's different now than during any of the revivals of earlier centuries, when preachers could just start talking and be assured an audience of people consciously thirsty for Truth. People need to be persuaded of their need for Truth, and of the availability of it in Christianity.

This happens through community.

They will know us by our love.

Looking ahead to another semester in leadership with ISI, which I think can only and wholly be described as a 'gospel community,' this book spoke to me not only on a 'hm, cool ideas' level, but also a 'wow, I need to do this' level. Because evangelism and discipleship? Like I said, that's what we're all about.

Takeaways:

• 'It is so important to love your neighborhood and its culture' (45). 
• The point of a campus ministry group is not to create a haven in which people can hide from the corrupting influences of the world. The point is to create a living body from which to send people to love the world.
• This means that ISI as a group and its members as individuals must be known for their extraordinary love for and involvement in campus life. This could mean dorms, sports teams, extracurricular groups, or just people in general. The things that matter to our next-door neighbors must matter to us BECAUSE they matter to our neighbors, whom we love.
• 'An exclusive focus on community will kill community. It is only the Word of God that creates an enduring community life and love' (60).
• The point of a campus ministry group is not to be a campus ministry group. The point is to approach Christ together, and so see Him more fully for who He is.
• This means that ISI members can love each other best by feasting our eyes, ears, hearts, and selves on Jesus--when we see Him as He is, we become like Him. He is love. When we see Him as He is, we cannot help but love.
• 'The vast majority of Christians feel that they do not get any significant support for their daily work from the teaching, preaching, prayer, worship, pastoral, group aspect of local church life. No support for how they live 50% of their waking lives' (90).
• The point of a campus ministry group is not only to pray for each other's non-physical spiritual endeavors. The point is to hold each other up through every good endeavor, recognizing that everything we do has potential to change the individual and the community when done with an eye to the freedom of the gospel.
• This means that ISI cannot pass through prayer time or accountability groups and only discuss the movings of the heart and the mind. We must also discuss with sincerity and intensity the movings of the the hands, the feet, and the tongue.
• 'To lead a gospel community you do not necessarily need to be able to deliver a forty-minute sermon, but you do need to be able to apply the gospel faithfully to people's lives' (145).
• Thank God it's not about eloquence.
• Thank God the gospel is living and active beyond my ability to proclaim it prettily.
• 'Although the primary place of belonging is in the gospel community, the weekly event is also important. This is where we stir our minds and our hearts to action through singing God's praises together, sharing stories to inspire one another, and learning from the Word' (155).
• The point of a campus ministry group is not to rally once a week. The point is to energize and equip each other there by focusing on the Living Christ, and thence go and serve.
• This means that if ISI Thursday night tanks on a given week, we will all be okay, really. Even someone visiting should have greater cause to be there than the idea of 2 hours on a school night listening to awesome music/talks: the cause should be the idea of 2 hours spent with people who have proven themselves to be consistent in Love.

All in all:

Nothing I as a leader can do administratively will change the way ISI operates, for better or worse. Because ISI is not the thing God uses to reach people; people are the ones God uses to reach people. After all, He does not live in the institutional structure, whatever little there is. The Most High does not dwell in houses made by hands. He dwells in human hearts, and He changes them and the people around them.

My job?

Letting the gospel take effect in my life. 

Cultivating the fruit of the Spirit. 

Living like I want to see every member of ISI living.

Opening myself up to admonishment and exhortation when I'm failing at that.

Loving people.

Finding peace in the efficacy of the gospel to the lives of the Christians I am blessed to commune with.

Encouraging my brothers and sisters to do the same.

everyday church part 1 (the story)

Here are some stories of faithfulness for you:

My family had a rough time finding a church. In fact, they have been having a rough time, as this entire summer has consisted of visiting different churches every week. It did not take long for me to fall into the habit of sitting in the backseat of the car grumbling about how it's been six months and can't we just pick someplace and stay there? Losing 100% of my spiritual community would be hard enough even with a band-aid to stick on myself temporarily. But a few weeks ago, finally, we visited a church in the next town over and decided to come back. And then decided to come back again. And I was (and am) overjoyed.

Another story: KCal gave me a copy of Everyday Church at the end of the school year. I had no time to read it then, so I packed it away. After pretty near demolishing my summer reading list, this week I began to peruse my own bookshelf for books I owned but hadn't read yet... And that one jumped out. So I read it. Finished it Saturday. Thought it was amazing.

Where these things intersect? Last Sunday was our third week visiting this church as a family. Afterwards we went to their monthly 'find out about our church' meeting. One of the pastors sat us down and told us about the way they structure life at the church, specifically discipleship. And I was having major déjà vu, because as he was explaining the structure and functionality of the 'growth groups' that make up the church, it sounded kind of like he was quoting Chester & Timmis. When I asked him, he confirmed this suspicion.

We found like the only church in Ohio following the Everyday Church model*. Okay, maybe not only, but it's still cool. Especially considering the timing.


Other semi-related stories of faithfulness:

Gospel community? Only 99% lost. I found out a few weeks ago that one of my friends, who hasn't shared my geographical location for over a year, lives in the town-next-door! How. amazing.

I dropped my English major, officially, and I feel so much peace. Except that somehow I am still moved by other people's expressed hurt/disappointment. Sigh. Humanity. Anyway, after thinking and praying about this for about 4 months, I am convinced that it's right, and LOOK AT ME GUYS I'm learning to discern Value from Apparent Usefulness.

          (as if an English major were ever apparently useful...)



*Notes on What I Mean By This Ambiguity tomorrow

fangirlfangirlfangirl

George MacDonald is basically my favorite.

He might be one of 8 favorites, but he is still basically my favorite.

The man wrote fairy tales for a living.

I received The Princess and the Goblin as a Christmas present when I was young; back then the 'Penguin Classics' seal on the front of the book was a deterrent rather than an attraction, so it sat lonely and unloved on my bookshelf for several years (woe). Two summers ago, I decided I wanted to read something that was not Golden Age Russian literature (because everything else I read was), and that was the icebreaker of choice.

What a choice.

I've read it a few times now, and I finally got my hands on the sequel: The Princess and Curdie.

Now, I could wax long and eloquent-ish on the value of the fairy tale as an art form, etc etc. But because I wouldn't be particularly good at it just yet, I shall refer you to other people who have said it all with silver tongue and fireflies:

Tolkien, On Fairy-Stories 

Chesterton, The Ethics of Elfland

Now, if I know you/have talked to you about things that make me happy in the past 6 months, I have probably referred you to these two essays already. There's a reason. Read them.

MacDonald utters a little meta-explanation for Why Fairy Tales Are Necessary in The Princess and Curdie. (It's meta because the book itself is a reason for Why Fairy Tales Are Necessary, and here Curdie's father gives his own apologetic.)

'Still,' said Curdie, looking a little ashamed. 'I might have dreamed my duty.'
'Then dream often, my son; for there must be more truth in your dreams than in your waking thoughts.'

Maybe truth and reality are not so synonymous as would be comfortable to think.

what have you done

Dear Vision Mentor of 2013,

What have you done.

Yes, you, the one still wearing facepaint from last night's scavenger hunt because you were too busy writing affirmation letters at the last minute to take a shower. The one stuffed full of Victory Waffle. The one ready to collapse in bed at 9pm, except that Vision Prom is tomorrow and you want to practice your Tunak Tunak Tun moves in the mirror some more (besides the fact that your room is currently 95 degrees and smells like Raid). Yeah, I see you.

What have you done?

Oh, friend. You've just spent four weeks getting paid to be a saint. Which is totally easy peasy.

...Take Mary for an example. Mary wasn't awesome because she worked her butt off to follow all of the rules. No, the thing that made her a saint was what was inside of her: Love. As in, the Person, in-the-flesh Love who also happened to be God.

And that happened to you this month. You became, for each other and for the students, a vessel for the in-the-flesh Love who also happens to be God. Can you grasp that? Can you understand how ridiculous and yet true that is, that God would give us not only the permission but the ability to hold Love (i.e. Himself) inside of us?

But you of all people know that to hold Love inside yourself is synonymous with pouring Love outside of yourself. If it's locked up in a safe somewhere in you, chances are 100% that it's not actually Love. No, when God gives Himself to us it's earth-shattering. It changes not only you, but everybody around you.

Maybe that's the coolest thing about what you just did. Not only did you have literally nothing else to do or be but Love, but you were doing and being love with 65+ other people in exactly the same position.

If the fact that you have the actual living Jesus inside you changes everybody around you, what do you think of the fact that you were around 65+ other people who also have the actual living Jesus inside them? Those people have also held Love, and they have also poured Love out, and that has changed you.

There's no other way it could have been.

Why am I sending this to you now, instead of on Monday or next month, when you are actually starting to process what-you-have-done? Because I want you to be confident, as you say goodbye, that it's not over. When the actual living Jesus gives Himself to you, and you hold Love inside yourself, there is nothing that can stop that.

--Unless you stop that. Unless you stop pouring Love outside of yourself. Because then what you have will no longer be Love.

As someone who has made it through a whole year since the end of my Vision experience, I can tell you with 100% certainty that opportunities to pour Love out are never going to cease to throw themselves at you. And I can tell you with 100% certainty that you have gotten so addicted to Love that you will do anything, and give anything, to get more of it.

...I'm not telling you not to be sad you have to go home. I'm not telling you not to cry tomorrow. (Oh, you will cry. Just wait till you hear the reading at Mass.) But I'm telling you that leaving is not loss. It is gain.

If what was being brought to an end came with glory, much more will what is permanent have glory. (2 Corinthians 3:11)

Now go be God's.

With so much love,
Vision Mentor of 2012

teach your children...

Alternately: In Which Katie Interacts with Culture for the Second Time in One Week (crazy.)

So, in my semi-sphere of the internet, there has been a bit of an explosion over a certain pastor's post on Twitter:

And the traditional evangelicals/Calvinists are all singing PREACH IT! And the everybody-elses are all begging him to STUFF IT! (and then expressing sympathy for his kids)

Probably the most emblematic negative response is in a post by a woman named Elizabeth. Among other things, she says:

Tell your children they are whole.
I still struggle every day to believe God loves me. This is because when you teach a child they are unworthy and somehow intrinsically broken/flawed/less-than, you set them up for disaster–not just in their relationship to God but in their relationships with people.
...When I sincerely believed I was broken/bad, it was nearly impossible for me to receive God’s grace and love. When I believed I was inherently broken, I stayed in relationships and situations and churches that caused me long-term pain because I didn’t believe I deserved better.

Yikes. I have struggled a lot between my Westminster Shorter Catechism days and my Catechism of the Catholic Church days regarding the idea of Total Depravity. The idea of I Am A Worm And Deserve All Things Bad.

How do I balance the fact that I do believe that I am sinful and was born that way, à la St. Augustine, with the fact that I do believe that I am redeemed and should act that way, à la Augustus Toplady?

More to the current point, how do you teach that to a child without getting his head stuck in the mire of believing himself eternally unlovable?

Grace.

You can't understand the gift of something you didn't deserve until you understand that there are good things you don't naturally deserve.

You also can't understand the gift of something you didn't deserve until you understand the Giver, whose whole desire is to give good gifts to His children.

I think my parents did this very well. I still remember very vividly the day I stole gum out of my mom's purse. She caught me, reclaimed the gum, and told me stealing was wrong. I remember waiting for Daddy to get home. What was going to happen? erk.

But the punishment/lecture I was sure was coming didn't. After dinner they sat me on the counter, told me that grace was when someone who loves you gives you something you didn't earn, and let me have ice cream for dessert.

Mind. Blown.

So don't just tell your kids they are 'deeply broken.' And definitely don't treat them that way. But also don't tell your kids they are perfect. While I doubt this is what she actually does, Elizabeth's post makes it sound like she's teaching her children that they are whole and a-okay as they are.

No. Teach your kids that they are not God. (That's a big step, especially for the firstborn.)

And when they sin (they will), identify what they've done as sin.

And then love them anyway.

Because a kid's first idea of God comes from the parents. And when they see themselves sinning, and see themselves loved, they're not thinking in terms of broken/whole. They're thinking in terms of gratitude, which is the only proper response.

time and again (and again and again and again)

Well, if I didn’t already know that the modern age is BEYOND HOPE OF REDEMPTION, Jack Finney's time travel novel, Time and Again, would have proven it to me. It criticizes 1970s America for the same problems we have now (plus a few degrees of severity, thanks to the Internet Explosion).

It seems the faddish thing to do these days... that is, to criticize these days. Kids nowabout are illiterate. People just don't know how to talk to each other anymore. The millenials are going to ruin America. Nobody even tries to do anything before they turn 30 anymore. And on, and on, and on.

Maybe they have a point.

Finney's narrator observes of the people in the 1880s (where he has traveled):

There was an excitement in the streets of New York in 1882 that is gone. ... The faces [of the people] were animated, they were glad to be just where they were, alive in that moment and place. ... Above all, they carried with them a sense of purpose. You could see that: they weren't bored, for God's sake! Just looking at them, I'm convinced that those men moved through their lives in unquestioned certainty that there was a reason for being. And that's something worth having, and losing it is to lose something vital.

I mostly appreciate what he's saying. 

To be glad for the sake of life, and not in that sappy 'well, I guess I can be happy to be alive' way, but really grateful for the things around me... that's beautiful.

To know definitively that there is reason behind the story of my life... that's beautiful.

And without these things, yeah, life is going to kind of suck.

Finney implies pretty heavily that we've lost the 1880s' sense of life. And I think that is very unfair.

I've been listening to Tim Keller in the mornings for the past week or so (I swear nobody's paying me to endorse him. I just want to share the awesome), and the one thing that comes through almost every sermon is: When I place my hope in Christ, I change; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control begin to spring up in my heart in a way impossible before.

So when I look at a group of people utterly changed by the love of God, they look like the people Finney is describing. Even if they are Modern to the utmost, they maintain vitality and beauty.

And what we have now that the people in the 1880s didn't have? Separation. The margin between the Joyful and the Despondent is wider; there are fewer people caught in the lukewarm soup between them... which means that people shouldn't have to figure out time travel to see people whose radiance they envy. That should be us.

Even though it would be cool to dress like this... and really. The Third Great Awakening. Charles Spurgeon!! etc.

This post is brought to you in part by Tim Chester, Steve Timmis, Tim Keller, and probably other things that aren't Jack Finney.

wide sargasso sea + racism

Truthfully, I’m getting a little tired of writing reflections on every single book I read this summer. I should probably quit while I’m ahead, because chances are you (whoever ‘you’ are, if ‘you’ haven’t abandoned ship yet) are tired of reading reflections on every single book I read.

But I need to remember to keep thinking while I read, so too bad. Too bad for all of us. Alas.

Anyway, the next book I have to discuss conveniently relates to actual current events (whaaattt). Wide Sargasso Sea is one of those multitudinous and sundry offerings of 20th century British women writers… in this case, of a 20th century Caribbean-born, part-British-part-Creole woman (Jean Rhys).

This is the book about the Madwoman in the Attic. This is the story of Bertha Rochester, before she burns down Thornfield Hall and blinds the man who married her and then locked her away so he could flirt with Jane Eyre. (Spoiler warning, whoops.)

This is the book about the life of a post-William-Wilberforce ‘white negro,’ torn between two cultures and two colors. This is the book about how she is molded, pruned, and otherwise trained into insanity because she lives in neither one world nor the other, and people know that, and people hate that. She isn’t white enough for her husband or black enough for her childhood friends. And people hate that. And people hate her.

Before the verdict, I heard a bajillion different opinions on the Trayvon Martin case. And by ‘bajillion,’ I mean ‘two.’

1. Zimmerman will be acquitted because the jury is 85% white women, and white women are afraid of black men. Therefore they’ll give him the benefit of being so afraid of this black kid with Skittles that he chased him down and put himself in a position where self-defense had been excluded by his own stupidity and prejudice. And this proves that racism is still alive and thriving in the US. Pooh-pooh on you, legal system.
2. Zimmerman will be hung because the jury will not want to look racist, and the verdict must always (politically correctly) favor the black man, regardless of whether the evidence shows that he was being beaten up when he shot. And this proves that racism is still alive and thriving backwards from normal in the US. Like affirmative action, but in the courtroom, which is WRONG.

Well, I think that this is all a bunch of baloney. It doesn’t even deserve a proper spelling of that mysterious meat-product.

Because… whichever way the verdict went, it proves racism.

It proves that we make decisions based on the color of people’s skin.

It proves that we keep associations depending on white and black.

It proves that culture and personality are ascribed to you by virtue of melanin.

WELL OF COURSE. That happens. We know that. And we know that this is wrong. I would say that neither outcome of the case can be definitively proven to be the result of racism… which, I think, is okay, because we already know that racism is a thing that happens. And we know that it is evil. We don’t need a trial to prove it.

The Trayvon Martin case did not have a racist potential ending (evil) and a non-racist potential ending (good). Both were pretty bad.

Because what happened was bad.

And the solution is not to hate the people of another race. It’s not even to hate the personality traits unjustly attributed to that other race. Otherwise, we end up with children like the young Bertha/Antoinette being driven away like a ‘white cockroach.’ We want to separate ourselves from all that is shameful and then shame it, whatever our value system declares that to be. 

And so we mold, prune, and train both ourselves and the people around us into paranoid insanity, incapable of loving or thinking ourselves loved. Because in that sort of world, that’s probably true.


Note: I may have just stuck both feet in my mouth. Or else said nothing at all useful. If so, I apologize.

story of a soul

Friends, this makes one of my Top 10 lists. I'm not sure which one yet. I plan to start working on making those this week.

Probably 10 Most Life-Changing? 10 Most Challenging? 10 Most Revolutionary? (The point is, it's amazing, and you should read it.)

I briefly touched on this book in my post about learning to be a child. The little way that Therese puts forth is so ridiculously, unbelievably attractive even in its unremarkable-ness. Because of its unremarkable-ness.

I've been struggling the past few weeks with the unremarkable-ness of my own life. I'm rebelling against it and trying to change it... how can I make my life exciting again? How can I be at the center of action and making amazing things happen for the Kingdom of God? I will never take the bubbling kind of life at school for granted again; I will harness its every power and make something fantastic. Just let me be remarkable.

But oh, isn't the remarkable getting kind of commonplace?
Is being useful not sometimes a roadblock to being truly valuable?

One of the things Therese talks about is the part of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus tells us to 'lend, expecting nothing in return' (Luke 6:35). She brings up something interesting... sometimes it is so much easier to give than to lend, especially when you do not expect something back.

If you could just make a gift out of your time/energy/money/whatever, you could feel some sort of virtue in it. It's sacrifice, right? Very noble. But if you're lending, the other person gets to feel like they'll pay you back (even if they won't), and you don't get any of the glamor or perceived virtue out of it. All you've done is lend. It's a much quieter virtue, and therefore a much harder one.

And that's what family life is like. I lend my sister a buck or two for Starbucks, but I know I won't get that back unless I bug her for it. Or I go with her to dog-sit overnight, and I know I won't get a cut of the money unless I bug her for it. But at the moment at which I'm giving her the money or sleeping on a bed with two snoring dogs, the understanding is that I am lending the money or lending the time.
(Confession: in both of these instances, I did bug her later.)

Or it's like my tutoring. My GED student is paying me $100 for the whole summer. It comes out to something like $4/hour, which is not very much at all... especially for tutoring, which usually goes more like $20/hour... but I also can't call my work with her 'volunteering' now or get the satisfaction of my gift of goodwill.
(Confession: I tried to do it for free.)

And my whole life is like this! I get so many opportunities for acts of half-charity, or what feels like half charity, and I either snub my nose at it entirely or try to force it into 'whole-charity.' I'm coming to understand that both of those are the same thing.

Sometimes the remarkable thing might be to actually remain unremarkable.

Again, read this book. It's a beautiful view of what Chesterton's 'The Paradoxes of Christianity' looks like played out in the life of a young woman in the simplest setting possible. It's threatened to change the way I think about things. Read it. Did I say that already?

brideshead revisited

I had never heard of this book before last year, when all of a sudden it became the book that I needed to read. So I did. Molly read it with me, actually, and I’ve definitely enjoyed pondering it with her over Google Hangouts.

Up front:

Favorite part: the character of Sebastian, and especially anything to do with Aloysius

Least favorite part: the general narrative style

I can’t put my finger on what exactly makes this novel feel Catholic. It’s not just that Evelyn Waugh was Catholic, or that all of the characters end up Catholic at the end. It’s something about the writing, the particular ethos of the book. I would guess that part of it has to do with Waugh’s tendency to relate everything back to romantic love, which for some reason makes me think of Catholicism. Sorry. Mental associations are weird.

For example, Waugh spends almost a page describing the military as an old lover turning false. A little while later, Sebastian’s childhood is cast as his beloved. Later still, love is the subject, personified as something military and mercenary.

But in the end… all of these loves are shown to be ‘forerunners.’ Charles, the main character, says that Sebastian was the ‘forerunner’ of Julia in his affections. She responds, ‘Perhaps I am only a forerunner, too.’ Here, Waugh slips into one of his almost-preachy and definitely-foreshadow-y paragraphs that pepper the text.

‘Perhaps, I thought, while her words still hung in the air between us like a wisp of tobacco smoke—a thought to fade and vanish like smoke without a trace—perhaps all our loves are merely hints and symbols; a hill of many invisible crests; doors that open as in a dream to reveal only a further stretch of carpet and another door; perhaps you and I are types, and this sadness which sometimes falls between us springs from disappointment in our search, each straining through and beyond the other, snatching a glimpse now and then of the shadow which turns the corner always a pace or two ahead of us.’

Waugh is hinting at a romantic love higher and grander than anything Charles has experienced so far, a love (both the object of love and the love itself) that is Ultimate. It is this Ultimate that, I think, Waugh really wanted to write a novel about.

I would wager that is why he called it Brideshead Revisited. Yes, Brideshead is the name of a place that the narrator returns to. Very straightforward. But I think there’s another meaning…

Think of the word ‘maidenhead.’ A woman’s maidenhead is her virginity, the proof and seal that she is a maiden. Let’s say a woman’s ‘bridehead’ or ‘brideshead’ refers to a similar thing… her state of being a bride, whatever it is that marks her as being a woman either about to get married or just recently married.

As a bride, a woman gives herself over to a man, one she has loved, to enter into a relationship somehow deeper and more than just love. She had love before the wedding; there must be something greater afterwards for her to have wanted it at all. Among other things, marriage is a mutual commitment to belong to each other. The Merriam-Webster dictionary says that it is when man and woman unite. Become one.

Charles gives himself as a bride (if you will) to several players in the novel: Sebastian, art, Julia, the military. These become committed relationships of love that go beyond affectionate feelings to the merging of identities. Sebastian does the same. Julia does the same.

But somehow none of those unions are permanent. After a while, Charles must attach himself to something (or someone) new. At the conclusion of the novel, when he has drunk his past wells dry, he again must revisit his brideshead. He must again become a bride, again commit his life and love to something (or someone), again unite his identity with another’s. This time, Waugh suggests that Charles visits his brideshead for the last time. It is finished. It is Ultimate.

I’m torn between thinking this novel is beautiful and thinking it’s too simple. I can’t decide.

why I'm thankful for my commute

Allow me to say it up front: I hate driving. I don't think it's that much fun, and I'm not naturally good at it (which means that often I AM that terrible driver you probably curse at sometimes. I sincerely apologize).

This summer, I have been blessed with the chance to live in a neighborhood that is a 25-40 minute drive from everything: from my sister's school in one direction and my dad's work in another... from my VBS in one direction and my church in another... from the actual city in one direction and the community college in another. In fact, there are three community colleges in my county, and I live 25-40 minutes from all of them.

What this means is that I spend a LOT of time in the car. Every morning I drive 30 minutes to the college, and every afternoon 30 back. Sometimes I hit rush hour both ways, which makes it longer.

And I'm so grateful.

My commute means that I pray daily, whether I mean to or not. I was struggling a lot the first few weeks of summer to hold myself accountable and seek God when my life was so mundane that I was neither drawn to Him by overwhelming joy nor driven to Him by difficult circumstances. But put me in the car and oh boy. Every day I get to work in one piece is a miracle, and every minute behind the steering wheel is a minute of active reliance on God. People are stupid when they drive, myself included--with as many close calls as I've had and as few accidents (zero), I will never underestimate the ability of God to use the same thing to draw AND drive you to Him. Every day if need be.

Speaking of stupid drivers, my commute means that I see my sin. How in the world can I be so ungracious as to mutter at the person going 2mph under the speed limit? But I am. Once upon a time I thought I was patient; I don't kid myself any more. Also, interacting with people when we're all in enclosed metal vehicles means that my self-centeredness is totally unveiled. I am the only person on the road I know about. I know my needs and my story, and everybody else may as well be a computer player in MarioKart. They are vehicles, not people. ...except that they are people. Oops. As long as I am driving, I doubt I will ever ascribe perfection to myself.

So, when I turn off my inner analysis-monologue? My commute means that I can practice silence. Silence. Focus. Complete distance from Facebook, texts, and (in a car with a broken cassette deck, no CD player, and no radio stations I like) music... there is exactly one task at hand, which is getting where I'm getting safely. If I'm doing other things, that first one is in jeopardy (which is usually the case, but there are few things that motivate you to singlemindedness like the choice between 'distraction' and 'death').

But sometimes my commute means that I can listen to Tim Keller every day. In the mornings the traffic is usually tame enough that I can handle a sermon podcast on my phone. And there is nothing like a theologically sound discussion of the Lord's Prayer at 7:15am.

And if I decide against both of those, my commute means that I can sing as loud as I want, up to an hour a day. And there's not a lot more to say about that.

Finally, my commute means that God really does turn our least favorite things into incredible blessings, which I probably should have figured out sooner... but driving? Who would have thought? How silly.

One of the things I was most scared about for this summer has turned out to be one of the things I'm most thankful for. But (let's be honest) I still hate driving.

a mind like that

I am downright gluttonous for amusement. From the moment I wake up, I need to be pulled out of myself somehow. Thanks to the smartphone, that's not too tall an order--with one swipe I turn off the alarm, with the next three I can open the Bible verse of the day, quickly followed by email, Facebook, and the Words With Friends game I'm winning against my mom.

Eventually I can pull myself out of the tiny screen in favor of a larger one (laptop, or sometimes TV), and then onto the printed page (where I can flatter myself to be not enslaved to instant-gratification-entertainment).

I've finished three books in the last 36 hours. Now I am 30 pages away from finishing a fourth. Expect words on Brideshead Revisited this weekend, after my Skype conference with Molly. The other two that I read cover to cover the recently are more reasonably squished into such a short time frame-- A Wind in the Door and A Swiftly Tilting Planet, both by Madeleine L'Engle, in a series with her more famous A Wrinkle in Time. 

Every time I read those books (and I have done so at least 6 or 7 times), I am amazed at the way Ms. L'Engle's mind works. How is it that she creates such a complex world of interwoven threads of physics, biology, literature, history, mythology, and what-if-that-happened is utterly beyond me. How she then knows that world so intimately that the complex becomes simple and approaches the story with so little drama that children can grasp it is UNFATHOMABLE. 

Hers is a mind capable of focus. Hers is a mind capable of creation. Hers is a mind capable of persuasion.

I don't think I know anybody who functions on a level remotely close to hers, and I wonder-- what does this kind of story-making have to do with my way of life? Am I relient on constant occupation and fast-moving information input because I am incapable of creating anything real enough to engage me? Or have I failed to create anything this real because I have grown so used to exercising the fast-twitch muscles of my brain that I don't want to do anything else?

'Not everybody is able to see me,' he told her. 'I'm real, and most earthlings can bear very little reality.'   (A Wind in the Door)

This goes beyond trouble focusing on a task without getting distracted. This is an issue of directed entrance into a problem, a story, a world, a question that is not inside my control. For me, I feel challenged in this way most often in literature. It calls me out of myself, but not into a void of flashing screens and vapid plots (like much of my phone-flipping and some of my book-reading), but into a world somehow solider than I am. It's all kinds of scary, but at the same time necessary. Because I want a mind like Madeleine L'Engle's.

learning to be a child

These days have been exciting for me. Physically boring, maybe, but my brain is barely still for a moment.

Friends. My spirit is waking up.

I blame Therese, i.e. St. Therese of Lisieux. Also Evelyn Waugh, the Apostle Luke, and Tim Keller. That motley crew.

While there are some things that I can barely put into pictures in my mind, let alone words in a blog post, I think what it comes down to is set up quite nicely in Luke 9:46-48...

An argument arose among them as to which of them was the greatest. But Jesus, knowing the reasoning of their hearts, took a child and put him by His side and said to them, “Whoever receives this child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives Him who sent me. For he who is least among you all is the one who is great.”

I speak with the very opposite of pride when I say: I think I have always been sort of a large person. Growing up, I was the one who would do big things.
A very certain way to please me is to remark on how fit I am
for grand works of intellect,
   for leadership,
      for respectable places like Notre Dame,
         for public performance,
            for speaking to adults...
and honestly, you might be right. With the exception of the first, these are places I have been and thrived. I come alive at the opportunity to direct, to organize, to plan, to conduct, to achieve. And not just anything, but things of monumental significance. If something I have to do does not immediately appear to be of such significance, by gum I'm going to twist it so that it is.

This year I started to learn that I am perhaps not so fit as I might like to think. And I have started to learn to rejoice in my insufficiency for truly great matters, like the turning of a soul towards God. --but many times I don't bother to look for joy like that, and instead go back and lean on those things in which I know I'm competent.

I want to be great. I want to do great things.

Never has my heart been struck by a desire to be small. Or if it has, it's recovered rather quickly. I see passages like the one above and try to brainstorm up ways to be dramatically childlike and GREAT. This, obviously, is stupid ('dramatically childlike' being an oxymoron), and I usually burn out after about five minutes.

But... a lot of my reading/listening lately has been very focused, and very confrontational.
It is impossible to reflect on the Lord's Prayer through the lens of Our Father without feeling the need to be a child.
It is impossible to read the words of Therese without desiring the simplicity, awe, and love she breathes.
It is impossible to be proud of the way of grandness when one is shown the value of littleness.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of God. But what if poverty of spirit is not something you achieve through great works of discipline and penitence, but something you are born with or not? The character I see in Therese, and in some people I know personally, is not the sort of thing that can be worked for oneself. That would defeat the point.

Jesus... said, “How difficult it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” Those who heard it said, “Then who can be saved?” But He said, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.”   (Luke 18:26-28)

This is kind of life-changing. It's thrilling what Jesus is saying. 'You think you're rich? That wealth is to your detriment, it is poverty, when you are trying to obtain the Kingdom. --But wait! That's perfect: I desire your poverty. I want to give you a pearl of great value, to make you Beautiful.'

What is impossible with man is possible with God.

I am utterly dependent on His love.

Somehow, in the desire to become small, poor, and childlike, I have known myself to be just that.