Well.
It is true that the intellect is vagabond, and our system of education fosters restlessness. And my body is no longer forced to stay home, or at least it won't be, a month from now.
Because I'm going to Russia! wow. finally. how? good question.
But I'm keeping another blog dedicated solely to Russia-things, so that I can share it with family/professors/academia more freely.
So. Please check that out if you want to know what I'm thinking about/doing/etc as regards Russia! I'll probably continue to post un-Russia-related things here.
До свидания!
Friday, December 27, 2013
Wednesday, December 25, 2013
in which Katie is absurdly easy to shop for
For Christmas this year, I told my family I really only wanted two things: interesting books (because I always want those) and socks (because I've worn holes in all of mine).
Let me tell you something... when you ask for socks for Christmas, you are setting yourself up for buckets full of joy. I ended up with 7 pairs of socks, and I'm thrilled. Wow. I love socks.
But that's not the great part. Here, enjoy a picture of my two favorite finds from this Christmas:
Yes, that is a biography of C. S. Lewis (endorsed by Eric Metaxes, Tim Keller, N. T. Wright, and Michael Ward... so basically guaranteed to be great). Yes, those are socks that look like sheep wearing purple hairbows. Yes, so far I like them both equally.
AND WAIT THIS IS THE ACTUAL BEST PART. I have those lovely, fuzzy, perfect sheep-socks in duplicate. Because not only did my sister get me a pair, but so did my Nana.*
Am I really that easy? I guess so. But seriously, I have sheep socks (and a Lewis biography).
Merry Christmas, friends. And may we all always be thrilled to receive socks for Christmas.
*I traded one pair with my sister for some equally soft snowman socks. Because it was only fair. So I'm down to only one pair of sheep socks.
Monday, December 23, 2013
Advent & fullness
Hey friends.
3 months later, I am back. I'm "home" now, which means less busyness and more posts.
This is a reflection I gave at ISI Christmas a few weeks ago. You may notice I stole a few sentences from another post earlier this year, but this is a different context, and I can do whatever I want with my own intellectual property, right? :)
***
Recently I’ve been struggling a bit with something. It’s this ineffable desire, a longing, a yearning… and a lot of times on the way out it phrases itself as “I want to be perfect.” It says, “I want to be loved, and I want to be worthy of love.” Like Eve in the Garden, it sighs, “I want to be like God.”
This is difficult for me because I am not perfect, and the end of the semester makes that abundantly clear. Everything is stressful, no one is sleeping enough, I can’t produce the kind of quality work I think I ought to, and there is a large number of things I need to do to prepare myself to live in Russia for 6 months that I just can’t seem to do on time. My desire, my longing, my yearning gets desperate this time of year, and I’m sitting in the middle of it right now, and there’s not much I can do to satisfy myself.
But if there’s anything Advent is good for (hint: there is a lot of things Advent is good for), it’s remembering that longing is a part of life, and that our yearnings often are, unbeknownst to us, ones placed there by God to lead us to Him. And so I sing with full conviction, O come, O come, Emmanuel. Come.
But maybe even more baffling is what the passage from John says here about the Incarnation. When the Word became flesh, we beheld his glory, full of grace and truth. And from His fullness we have all received.
Friends. We saw God’s glory. And God’s glory is full to the brim with grace and with truth. And then we received that fullness. When God became human, he shared with us out of the immeasurable abundance of grace and truth that are inherent to God.
What exactly does it mean, though? What does it look like for us to receive of the fullness of God?
Let’s look at Mary. She was the first, the original, the prototype of what John is telling us about. For months before anyone else knew she was even pregnant, Mary knew Jesus Incarnate.
And this is why Mary is admirable, why so many people love and revere her, probably why the University I attend is named after her: not because she worked extra hard to be extra holy, not because she followed all the rules, not even because she behaved admirably under the stress of being pregnant without being married. No, it’s because of what she had inside of her: Love. As in, the Person, in-the-flesh Love who also happened to be God. Jesus.
Mary carried the fullness of God within her. All of Who God is lived inside of her.
And friends, we’ve been offered that same thing. Can you grasp that? Do you understand what that means? It means that, in much the same way as God lived inside Mary, He is willing to live inside of us. He is Love, and He offers Love to become Incarnate in us as it did in Mary.
This is the call we have been given. Make Love physically present on earth. It is just as radical for us as it was for Mary. It’s bizarre. To love is to pour yourself out for the sake of another. To receive God’s fullness means to become empty. This is… impossible, it seems. Very difficult at the least.
But the angel Gabriel said to Mary, “the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” Jesus says to us, “I will send the Holy Spirit to you.” All things are possible with God—even making God physically present on earth.
We have been offered this gift. But how will we respond? “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”
We see that God has offered us His fullness. And in doing so, He has answered my longing. I might not be perfect, but He is perfect. I might not always think I am worthy of love, but in pouring love out of myself I become full of love. And instead of asking with Eve to be like God, I can ask with Mary to be with God and full of Him.
3 months later, I am back. I'm "home" now, which means less busyness and more posts.
This is a reflection I gave at ISI Christmas a few weeks ago. You may notice I stole a few sentences from another post earlier this year, but this is a different context, and I can do whatever I want with my own intellectual property, right? :)
***
Recently I’ve been struggling a bit with something. It’s this ineffable desire, a longing, a yearning… and a lot of times on the way out it phrases itself as “I want to be perfect.” It says, “I want to be loved, and I want to be worthy of love.” Like Eve in the Garden, it sighs, “I want to be like God.”
This is difficult for me because I am not perfect, and the end of the semester makes that abundantly clear. Everything is stressful, no one is sleeping enough, I can’t produce the kind of quality work I think I ought to, and there is a large number of things I need to do to prepare myself to live in Russia for 6 months that I just can’t seem to do on time. My desire, my longing, my yearning gets desperate this time of year, and I’m sitting in the middle of it right now, and there’s not much I can do to satisfy myself.
But if there’s anything Advent is good for (hint: there is a lot of things Advent is good for), it’s remembering that longing is a part of life, and that our yearnings often are, unbeknownst to us, ones placed there by God to lead us to Him. And so I sing with full conviction, O come, O come, Emmanuel. Come.
The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth… And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.Christmas is, at its core, about the Incarnation of God. When God came. When we celebrate “Jesus’ birthday,” we are celebrating the day that the Word became flesh, the day that God became Man, the day that the infinite became finite… and not just finite, but really, really small, and probably a little red-faced and crinkly too. It’s a mind-boggling image.
But maybe even more baffling is what the passage from John says here about the Incarnation. When the Word became flesh, we beheld his glory, full of grace and truth. And from His fullness we have all received.
Friends. We saw God’s glory. And God’s glory is full to the brim with grace and with truth. And then we received that fullness. When God became human, he shared with us out of the immeasurable abundance of grace and truth that are inherent to God.
What exactly does it mean, though? What does it look like for us to receive of the fullness of God?
Let’s look at Mary. She was the first, the original, the prototype of what John is telling us about. For months before anyone else knew she was even pregnant, Mary knew Jesus Incarnate.
And this is why Mary is admirable, why so many people love and revere her, probably why the University I attend is named after her: not because she worked extra hard to be extra holy, not because she followed all the rules, not even because she behaved admirably under the stress of being pregnant without being married. No, it’s because of what she had inside of her: Love. As in, the Person, in-the-flesh Love who also happened to be God. Jesus.
Mary carried the fullness of God within her. All of Who God is lived inside of her.
And friends, we’ve been offered that same thing. Can you grasp that? Do you understand what that means? It means that, in much the same way as God lived inside Mary, He is willing to live inside of us. He is Love, and He offers Love to become Incarnate in us as it did in Mary.
This is the call we have been given. Make Love physically present on earth. It is just as radical for us as it was for Mary. It’s bizarre. To love is to pour yourself out for the sake of another. To receive God’s fullness means to become empty. This is… impossible, it seems. Very difficult at the least.
But the angel Gabriel said to Mary, “the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” Jesus says to us, “I will send the Holy Spirit to you.” All things are possible with God—even making God physically present on earth.
We have been offered this gift. But how will we respond? “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”
We see that God has offered us His fullness. And in doing so, He has answered my longing. I might not be perfect, but He is perfect. I might not always think I am worthy of love, but in pouring love out of myself I become full of love. And instead of asking with Eve to be like God, I can ask with Mary to be with God and full of Him.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to this living hope.
O come, O come, Emmanuel.
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